Misfortune, as the old adage goes, never comes singly. But what the adage does not say is that we bring some misfortunes upon ourselves deliberately. Take the feisty defence of India’s most famous son-in-law Robert Vadra by his mother-in-law, Congress President Sonia Gandhi. By dismissing allegations of Mr Vadra’s commercial association with arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari, as a BJP conspiracy, Ms Gandhi invited all the brickbats that came her way. That left “Damaad ji” desperately looking for cover. As it is, Mr Vadra happens to be abnormally controversy prone, mostly out of his own doing. Some time ago, he apparently arm-twisted former Congress Chief Minister of Haryana to part with prime land near Gurgaon and promptly sold it to a hotel he had stakes in. Around the same time he bought up hundreds of acres of barren land in Rajasthan as he knew certain economically lucrative projects would be built in their vicinity and he would stand to make a killing soon.
But his latest venture –purchase of a palatial property in london, allegedly in collusion with his arms dealer friend was bound to raise fresh hackles. As Vadra ducked public glare, Mum-in-law jumped in. This tore off the carefully nurtured Congress defence of Vadra being a private citizen carrying on legitimate business but targeted by the BJP only on account of his marital connection. Recently, Congress posters showing his face plonk in between those of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi raised eyebrows about his political ambitions. And now it has been made public that the Congress party will come to his defence whenever he indulges in dubious deal-making.
The wisdom of absorbing him in the Congress pantheon is for the party to judge. All that can be said at this juncture is that as more revelations tumble out from the offices of investigative agencies, Vadra’s face will be left redder and redder. Also if his wife wants to come upfront and lead the Congress campaign in the 2017 UP elections, she will have to answer a plethora of questions about her husband’s shenanigans.