Digvijaya Singh is targeting the messenger
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh is enormously upset that the Supreme Court should have ‘belittled' the Central Bureau of Investigation by calling it a “caged parrot” which speaks the language of its many political masters. Mr Singh has missed the irony in his outrage; he belongs to a party which has a history of undermining democratic institutions — from the CBI to the Comptroller and Auditor-General to the Central Vigilance Commission. The Congress has not even spared the judiciary, as we had seen in and around Emergency days. But let that be for the moment, and let us concentrate on the context in which Mr Singh has rattled off his annoyance. The strange thing here is that the organisation he is defending is itself in complete agreement with the apex court's remarks. CBI Director Ranjit Sinha told journalists after having received a humiliating dressing-down by the court that the probe agency had indeed never been autonomous in its functioning and that it was a caged parrot — as one of the judges of the apex court had remarked. Not even the staunchest supporters of the CBI are under the illusion that the investigating agency works independent of executive control in politically sensitive cases. Everyone is unanimous that the CBI must get functional autonomy, which can come about with legislative measures. Given the situation, Mr Singh has only wasted precious words in trying to defend the indefensible. Instead of blaming the judiciary and all and sundry for ‘belittling' institutions, the Congress leader must concentrate on how these institutions have become his party's handmaidens. The belittling has not happened because of the Supreme Court's observations; the court's remarks came after the CBI had already been belittled through the shenanigans of then Union Minister for law and Justice Ashwani Kumar and the active collaboration in the misdeed by various other officials, including law officers of the Congress-led UPA Government. The court was especially upset that its earlier directives in the Vineet Narain case of 1996 had been repeatedly flouted. All these facts don’t seem to have influenced Mr Singh when he went about bashing the judiciary.
Mr Singh also offers a convoluted logic which, incidentally, had been the recurring defence of Congress leaders to prop up the likes of Mr Kumar till it became impossible for the Prime Minister to continue with his favourite Minister in the Cabinet. The senior Congress leader and unofficial mentor to party vice president Rahul Gandhi contended that the Supreme Court ought to have named the culprits if it had been so outraged, and not left the matter to mere ‘observations'. Observations, he added, are not verdicts. That may be so, and Mr Singh should be thankful that the judiciary did not name and shame to the extent that many had believed it would. But what it said is enough by way of an indictment. The Congress has to find better ways to stem the damage done.