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In normal circumstances, nobody would have inducted the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader, Shibu Soren, into the Government. Given his terrible criminal record coupled with a woeful lack of understanding and vision, Soren was condemned to remain a back-bencher in parliament all his life. But such being the compulsions of coalition politics, Manmohan Singh upon assuming office as prime minister was constrained to make Soren a senior member of his Cabinet.
To be fair, the good doctor had exercised little or no control over ministry-formation, that task having been usurped by the backroom managers who speak and act on behalf of the Congress boss, Sonia Gandhi. However the PM was afforded an opportunity by the BJP-led NDA opposition when it mounted a sustained campaign against `tainted’ ministers. He could have used the protests inside Parliament to ease out some of the more notorious thugs who sit with him in the Cabinet. Instead, egged on by Sonia Gandhi, Singh openly brazened out the storm and, worse, defended the bestowal of ministerships on criminal-minded politicians. Soren was one of the tainted ones.
Hardly had the opposition protest inside Parliament died when a sessions court in Jharkhand tossed the issue of tainted ministers into the centre-stage by declaring Soren a proclaimed offender. Though the Home Minister Shivraj Patil initially affected innocence about the case, there was no denying that the Government was forced on the back foot by its harbouring of a man declared a proclaimed offender in a case of multiple murders back in 1975. The case being old did not in anyway detract from the serious nature of the charges against Soren. It may be that through political manipulations and other stratagems Soren had ensured that the trial never came to a stage where he would be called upon to defend himself. But why had the court declared him a proclaimed offender now? Apparently, Soren had been evading the summons issued in 1986 but the case file had mysteriously gone missing all these years only to surface only recently. A collusion of the local administration in the hijacking of the case could not be ruled out. Otherwise, Soren and a few others would not have escaped the summons all these years.
But whatever the reasons behind the delay, the truth is that Soren stands charged in a case of murder of a group of Muslims as part of the agitation he had led to oust non-tribals from Jharkhand. So he must face the music. Indeed, quite apart from the above case, there are equally serious charges against him in a court case pertaining to the murder of his personal assistant. For someone who had hit the headlines for his role in the JMM MPs’ bribery case, Soren is not new to crime or criminal charges. But unlike at any point in time in his political career before, the big difference is that he is now a member of the Union Cabinet. And it is neither proper nor lawful for him to continue as a minister when he is wanted on charges of murder. His continuance as the Coal Minister in the UPA Government has now become wholly untenable. He must quit. If he doesn’t, the PM must sack him.
The compulsions of coalition politics cannot override the minimal legal and moral concerns that must inform the working of every regime. Nobody questions the financial integrity of the Prime Minister but in these permissive times a man is also known by the company he avoids. Unfortunately, the criminal thugs that Singh has surrounded himself with in the Government do not add any lustre to his image. Indeed, they tarnish it by association.
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