UPA regime stands shamed on coal scam
A Government with a modicum of self-esteem would have hanged its head in shame and quit after the singeing observations which the Supreme Court made on the coal block allocation scam on Tuesday. But the Manmohan Singh-led UPA regime has long abandoned its quest for dignified existence and appears content to merely remain alive, in whatever battered and disreputed condition. Crisis managers of the Government and the Congress, whose members in the regime have spun a web of deceit to find their way out of the scam, have swung into action with their usual brazenness to contain the damage. But, now that the credibility has hit rock-bottom, the regime led by Mr Singh has nowhere to hide. In questioning the Central Bureau of Investigation for sharing its status report on the scam with senior officials of the Government, the apex court has in reality hauled up the regime. It must be remembered that the CBI did not voluntarily request the Government to vet the report; as Union Minister for law and Justice, Mr Ashwani Kumar had summoned a meeting which was attended by officials of the probe agency, senior law officers of the Government, officials of the Prime Minister's Office and the Union Ministry of Coal. It was in this meeting that the report, which was strictly meant for the eyes of the court only, was shared. Mr Ashwani Kumar subsequently made changes to the report which the CBI eventually submitted to the court. And, to compound this audacious development, the Government's law officers proceeded to tell the court the lie that the CBI hadn't shared the report with the UPA regime.
Since a shocked Supreme Court has now observed that the development has caused “total erosion” in the faith that it had placed in the agency's integrity, the Government is to be squarely blamed for so seriously compromising the CBI's position. There is of course no doubt that the probe agency could have refused to follow the law Minister's directive and that, by not doing so, it has also confirmed the belief that it is a pawn in the hands of its political masters. While the CBI will have much explaining to do before the court over the manner it crawled before the regime, the central issue of the Manmohan Singh Government's complicity in trying to doctor a crucial document just cannot be brushed aside.
The regime's complicity is so deep that it can be addressed only through a major surgery; application of tincture of iodine like the CBI's replacement of Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval, will not work. The clash that has broken out between Mr Raval (who represented the CBI and said that the status report had not been shared with the Government) and Attorney General GE Vahanvati (who claimed that he had not even seen the report, though he was present in the infamous meeting) is only a symptom of the rot that has set into governance. From the Prime Minister down to the law Minister and further down — all are equally culpable and accountable for the fiasco. Rather than make scapegoats out of officials down the line, Prime Minister Singh and Mr Ashwani Kumar must own up their respective blunders. Else, their transgressions will catch up with them sooner than later.