Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 29, 2002
When the Congress demanded Union
IT Minister Pramod Mahajan's resignation in the wake of wild allegations
by Mrs Madhu Sharma (wife of Mr RK Sharma, IPS, fugitive in the Indian
Express correspondent Shivani Bhatnagar's case), my mind went back to a
similar episode in early 1996. An unmarried tribal girl working as a maid
at the residence of Dr Harshvardhan (then Minister of Health in the Delhi
BJP Government) was found to be pregnant. The Congress lost no time in
pasting the sin of impregnating an unmarried hapless girl on Dr Harshvardhan's
lust and asked for his head.
A section of the media, working
in tandem with the Congress, dismissed all protestations of innocence by
the accused, with contempt. Dr Harshvardhan's plea, that he was incapable
of committing the crime since he had undergone vasectomy in 1991, was not
accepted on the ground that such operations can go wrong. Finding himself
cornered, the beleaguered doctor offered to take a DNA test. As expected,
the report was negative.
But still the BJP leader was not
exonerated, for the Congress came out with a fresh charge. If not him,
it must be his brother-in-law, a frequent visitor to his house. The poor
brother-in-law had to pay for being related to a BJP leader. He also underwent
a DNA test and emerged innocent. Dr Harshvardhan's honour was restored
after 18 months of ordeal, which he, his family and the party had to go
through.
The cases involving charges against
Dr Harshvardhan or Mr Mahajan are not to be seen in isolation. They have
to be viewed in the context of Congress's expertise in "spit and run" operations
against its political opponents. Recall its Uttaranchal unit's recent allegation
against Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani's daughter Pratibha Advani, that
she had got some land allotted to a trust through the then BJP State Government.
The fact is that Ms Advani heads no trust anywhere in the country; nor
has she been allotted any land either directly or indirectly anywhere,
let alone in Uttaranchal. Once she issued a denial, the Congressmen, embarrassed
by the lack of substance in their fabricated charges, had to resort to
such stratagems as "Advani's daughter was visiting the place often".
The question is, how could a political
party of over 100 years' standing, be so irresponsible as to not even check
facts before levelling accusations? It is in line with the earlier allegation
that in Gujarat, a former Muslim MP's daughter was raped and killed during
the riots - the fact that the daughter was in the US at that time was simply
ignored. When that came out, the Congress did not even have the decency
to apologise. Nor do we expect it to now, in the Uttaranchal episode, in
the true Congress tradition of spit and run.
Recent history is full of such events.
In the latter half of the 1980s, Mr VP Singh had become a thorn in the
side of Rajiv Gandhi with his stand that the party must tell the truth
regarding the Bofors gun contract. Mr Singh was targeted relentlessly after
he resigned. A trumped up charge that his son had a million dollar account
in some bank in St Kitt's Island was widely publicised. At the time the
allegation was made, the bank had already vanished. The press, however,
traced its owner and found that he was in Canada with a long history of
frauds to his credit. Finally an official probe laid bare how the whole
conspiracy was engineered to frame VP Singh's son and how an IFS official
was made to attest a document he had not seen or verified. But the Congress
never apologised for the forgery.
If the present Congress claims the
legacy of the party of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, it must also carry
the two decades campaign they ran while in power against the then opposition.
Those days, the Congress did not paste the label of rapists and murderers
on its political opponents. The CIA was its favourite bugbear. The Congressmen
went to town painting every rival partymen as CIA agents. Once the then
opposition leader Piloo Modi called the Congress bluff by carrying a bold
label around his neck saying, "I am a CIA agent".
Do we need to remind the Congress
the campaign it carried on against Jayaprakash Narayan for leading a struggle
against the corruption and nepotism rampant during their different regimes?
The persecution they launched on the so-called Kudal commission report
against one of the finest sons of this country? Not only personally against
JP but also against the Gandhi Peace Foundation? The number of CIA agents
and grants they "discovered" or fabricated to denounce JP? Even after JP's
death they did not leave him untouched - the persecution continued. Not
even a shred of evidence existed, but who cares?
First, they had the so-called pump
scam. When the Prime Minister cancelled allotments of the pumps demonstrating
that the ruling party had not got any advantage in these allotments made
by 50 and odd different bodies, the Congress changed its tune. Now they
were attacking the Prime Minister for canceling the allotments. Perhaps
these angels of virtue need to be reminded of their own record. Take the
scam of the 1970s when a Congressman got the signature of many MPs (some
fabricated) for a petition seeking licenses for import of hard liquor and
other goods for a business house. The link of the Congressman to the then
Commerce Minister LN Mishra was evident. When due to pressure in Parliament
an enquiry was held, Mrs Gandhi refused to show the report of the enquiry
to MPs until Morarji Desai threatened to hold a dharna inside Parliament
house. These are the people talking of probity in public life.
The last Congress regime of Mr PV
Narasimha Rao, in the five years of its existence, faced a barrage of corruption
charges, for some of which its dramatis personae are still facing the courts.
The Congress alone has the "glory" of having in its midst a Prime Minister
who has been convicted by a court on charges of corruption. Because the
appeal against the conviction is pending, we will not go into that sordid
story. Then there was infamous "tandoor" episode, involving the murder
of a young woman by a Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma.
The Congress's record of its own
scams, beginning with the notorious Jeep scandal in the Krishna Menon era
in the 1950s, to the Maruti car scandal of Sanjay Gandhi, the favoritism
in fertiliser plants to an Italian company during Mrs Gandhi's rule, and
ending with the urea scandal during the Rao regime, is just one aspect
of this grand old party of the country. Standing neck-deep in its own sins,
the Congress wants to paint all its opponents black. No wonder, over the
years, it has perfected the art, "spit and run". But for how long?
(The writer, Convener of BJP's Think
Tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
