Sushil Kumar Shinde is a national disaster. He should never have become the country's Minister for Home Affairs in the first place. He did. He ought to have been sacked months ago.
He wasn't. He should be shown the door at least now after a former Union Home Secretary has levelled serious, very specific and seemingly credible charges against him. He probably won't. The head of the Government to which he belongs has himself clung to the chair despite being regularly belittled by his own party colleagues, many of them junior in both age and stature, and despite being (not unfairly) accused of presiding upon loads of corruption. So, we could have one discredited person sitting by the side of another for the rest of the short term the UPA regime is left with.
There will be a rare national unanimity that Shinde is one the most incapable and inefficient Home Ministers the country has had. If there is anybody who can be considered as bad or worse, it is Shivraj Patil. Former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian has, in his recently-released book, India at Turning Point, noted sarcastically: “Insiders will know that if there were a competition for the ‘most ineffective' home minister ever, Shivraj Patil would win the cup. In fact, he has had fairly severe competition, including from the present incumbent to the post.” At least Patil was relatively more articulate and had a sartorial taste. Shinde has nothing to disguise his ineptness.
It's not that leaders of the Congress who are defending Shinde on television programmes do not know this. But they are left with no alternative except to shield the man. He is, after all, a 10, Janpath appointee. The Minister himself has remained silent on the allegations that former Union Home Secretary RK Singh has flung at him. What can he sayIJ That he did not pass on chits of recommendation to the then Delhi Police Commissioner to post favourite officersIJ Or that he did not block the interrogation of a businessman who had links with Dawood IbrahimIJ He can outright deny the accusations, but the problem is that Singh is not speaking out of his hat. The former bureaucrat said that the then Police Commissioner had himself informed him of these cases. In turn, Singh had brought the matter (and his frequent differences with the Home Minister on various other issues) to the notice of the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister. He had even offered to quit in disgust.
So, it is not just Shinde but also the country's top bureaucrat and the Prime Minister who need to tell the country whether Singh is lying or stating the truth. If the latter is the case, what action did the two of them take to address the issues the then Home Secretary had raisedIJ
Clearly, these are inconvenient queries. The best response is silence on the part of the players and a cacophony of counter-allegations by sundry other leaders and spokespersons of the Congress. The party is adept in the art of shooting the messenger and ridiculing the message. It did that with Vinod Rai when he was the Comptroller and Auditor General, accusing him of furthering the BJP agenda when he exposed wrongdoing in the 2G Spectrum scam. It has employed a similar tactic against Singh. The only difference is that Singh has joined the BJP while Rai has for now remained away from politics. There is another commonality. Just as Congress leaders are saying now that it was a ‘mistake' to have made Singh the Home Secretary, they had expressed a similar sentiment for Rai as well, claiming that it had been an 'error' to have given the latter a powerful position.
Apologists of the Congress have raised issues extraneous to the allegations that the former Home Secretary has made. They are not interested in the seriousness of the charges but in the ‘timing'. Instead of proving Shinde right, they are busy trying to prove Singh wrong. It is not working because there is no credibility to this approach. look at their silly objections. First, why did Singh not protest while he was in service if he knew Shinde was blunderingIJ The answer is: He did object, which is why he fell foul of the Minister and had to take his grievance right up to the Prime Minister. Second, why did Singh not record his objections in writingIJ There was no need for him to do so because he had informed his superiors about the issues that had troubled him. Remember here that neither the Cabinet Secretary nor the Prime Minister has denied Singh's revelation about meeting them. Third, after remaining silent all these months after retiring, why has he spoken out only after joining the BJPIJ A counter-question to this would be: How would it have changed the gravity of the allegations he has levelled had he made them while being outside the BJP or a few months earlierIJ
With his credibility stripped to less than the minimum, Shinde has become a joke. But nobody is laughing. If India's Home Minister is accused of shielding a businessman who is alleged to have links with the country's most dreaded and wanted terrorist, how can anybody laughIJ It is not a laughing matter that the Home Minister had interfered in the day-to-day postings of senior officers in Delhi Police. Did he act in the above two instances in lieu of certain political or other considerations, we do not know. It must be probed. One hopes that the Police Commissioner Singh has referred to comes out in the open. It is in the national interest that he does so and throws light on Shinde's antics, so that the issues the former Home Secretary has raised do not get buried in the debris of the character assassination which Congress leaders are indulging in against the former senior bureaucrat.
When it comes to the matter of credibility, Shinde stands no chance against RK Singh. The Minister has a terrible track record at worst and a bumbling one at best. He has sought to communalise the functioning of law and order by directing State regimes, not once but at least twice, and in writing, to ensure that their police forces do not target ‘innocent Muslims' for questioning. His concern for the minorities is touching, except that as the country's Home Minister, he should have been concerned equally about all innocent citizens who are harassed by the police. As the Union Minister for Power, he was clueless when the northern grid had collapsed in 2012. All he could say was that even the United States had experienced similar blackouts!
On the other hand, Singh has excelled in the many positions he held before touching his peak as Union Home Secretary. Many retired — and thus free to openly comment — civil servants have vouched for his efficiency and integrity. Few, even among the political class, leave alone the bureaucracy, will favour Shinde with a similar verdict.