Adarsh pirouette only for public consumption
The Maharashtra Government's decision to only partially accept the recommendations of the judicial commission investigating the Adarsh Housing Society scam is hogwash. Its sole purpose is to make the Congress-led regime in the State look like it is serious about fighting corruption, when in fact the Government has desisted from proceeding against any of the six senior politicians named in the report. All four former Chief Ministers, who have been nailed by the two-member judicial probe panel for granting “political favours”, have effectively been let off the hook.
The Government is not taking action against three of them — the late Vilasrao Deshmukh, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde (now Union Minister for Home Affairs) and Mr Shivajirao Nilangekar-Patil — on the ground that no “allegations of criminality” were levelled against them. In the case of former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, who had to resign from his position after the scandal broke in 2012 and who has now been found guilty of benefitting from the scam, the Government has refrained from filing a First Information Report because he has already been charge-sheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation. But it is yet to permit the apex agency to prosecute him. As for the two indicted Ministers of State, Mr Sunil Tatkare and Mr Rajesh Tope, they too will not face any punitive measures, as the Government has decided that they did not deal with the Adarsh file directly. The only ones who will be kept under the scanner for a little while longer are the 12 bureaucrats against whom a departmental inquiry will be undertaken. Clearly, none of the high- profile accused in the scam will be held accountable — perhaps, a scapegoat will be made out of a low-level bureaucrat and at best, Mr Chavan may be reprimanded.
The partial acceptance of the report has thus resulted in almost no difference at the ground level, making it clear that this much-vaunted pirouette is just for popular consumption. It comes only days after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi publicly criticised the Maharashtra Government for rejecting the report last month. Evidently, the party high command is trying to distance its heir apparent from the UPA's corruption taint and perhaps portray him as the country's next anti-graft mascot. Mr Gandhi's dissent on this issue is the second such stunt he has pulled in recent months, after he trashed his party-led Union Government's ordinance in September 2013 on protecting convicted lawmakers. Also, the manner in which this episode has unravelled has benefitted Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan. While on the one hand he has saved himself from the wrath of Maharashtra's political establishment, on the other, he too can now hope to share with Mr Gandhi the anti-corruption halo. But, unfortunately for Mr Chavan, Mr Gandhi and the Congress, all this political chicanery will fall flat on its face, as it stands on the faulty assumption that the common man can't see through it.