Himachal CM spells trouble for the Congress
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister and the Congress's tallest leader in the State, Virbhadra Singh, is in deep trouble. Now that the Bombay High Court has dismissed his plea seeking to quash a first information report the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered against him on corruption charges, and the CBI moving in swiftly to file a chargesheet against him in the High Court, Virbhadra Singh faces the prospect of a court trial unless the Supreme Court comes to his rescue. Regardless of whether he gets an immediate legal relief, the damage to his personal image, to the Government he heads, and to his party, cannot be downplayed.
Himachal Pradesh will elect a new Assembly towards the year-end, and the Congress Government there is on the backfoot, both on account of anti-incumbency and due to the taint that surrounds the Chief Minister and by extension, his regime and the party. It remains to be seen whether the Congress high command will move to replace him before the election or hope to tide over the crisis with him at the helm. For the moment, it does appear that the party is willing to back him to the hilt. Senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, responding to the chargesheet, said Virbhadra Singh would remain in his position since the CBI's chargesheet was a result of “political vendetta”. He added that there was “nothing to worry about”, following the development.
The Congress is in a bind. First, it does not have any leader in the the State of Virbhadra's stature who can take over and successfully lead the party to an Assembly election. Unlike in the case of the Bharatiya Janata Party, it also does not have a central leader with the charisma of a Narendra Modi who has the capacity to swing votes for the party. Second, Virbhadra Singh's removal would be a tacit admission that the Chief Minister was indeed involved in the graft he is being accused of. This would be bad for the party in the run-up to the election. Third, if the Congress high command directs him to quit, it has the onerous task of selecting a replacement, which could accentuate the factionalism within the party's State unit and even lead to revolts. Neither of the possibilities, is, therefore, palatable to the party.
At the same time, by continuing with Virbhadra Singh, the Congress would be taking a huge political risk. The charges against him are not as frivolous as Congress leaders are claiming, nor have they been concocted by the rival BJP. It may be recalled that allegations of irregularity against the Chief Minister had cropped up during the Congress-led UPA Government's tenure. The CBI has found that the Chief Minister had amassed wealth close to Rs210 crore — which is disproportionate to his known sources of income — from 2009 and 2011, when the UPA ruled the Centre. The acquisition of wealth had been done in his name as well as in the name of his family members, including his wife and children. The charges have been there in the public domain for a long while now, but Virbhadra Singh has not been able to satisfactorily explain them, and has merely reiterated that the campaign against was part of a political conspiracy. This defence cannot hold. The disproportion, after all, is to the tune of more than 190 per cent of his known sources of income.