HVK Archives: Go - even if you leave in chaos!
Go - even if you leave in chaos! - The Statesman
C R Irani
()
5 July 1997
Title: Go - even if you leave in chaos!
Author: C R Irani
Publication: The Statesman
Date: July 5, 1997
The Prime Minister has been an apparatchik all his life and his lack of
experience of politics, as she is played, is painfully evident. By
succumbing to the pressure of his family to rescue Ashok Jain from the
attentions of the Enforcement Directorate, he threw caution to the winds
and proclaimed to all the world and in particular to Sonia Gandhi that he
was vulnerable. By convincing himself that he alone stood between the
country and the BJP, he made every compromise which in the end availed him
nothing. When he removed the Director of the CBI and appointed the
discredited R C Sharma in a serious breach of rules and procedures, he
thought he was killing two birds with one stone - doing Sonia's bidding and
holding Congress firmly to his Government as well as sending a message to
Laloo that all would be well from now on. Didn't Sharma promptly announce
that he thought arresting politicians was a bad idea! For Laloo it was too
little too late although he showed appreciation by returning the compliment
and Proposing Gujral's name for party leadership.
In his anxiety to assure those concerned that he was their man, R C Sharma
moved out the efficient officer in the CBI's special investigating team who
was in charge of issuing Letters Rogatory to the four countries where
Quattrocchi sent the payments he received from Bofors. He was made to
change places with the officer handling administration. The exchange was
not calculated to speed up the Bofors investigation or to add to its
credibility. By rushing about like a blue bottle fly in other cases of less
consequence, Mr Sharma does not succeed in raising a cloud to hide his
purpose.
The Prime Minister said Joginder Singh had been promoted. By moving him to
Special Secretary in the Home Ministry after the Home Secretary and the
existing Special Secretaries, he was in fact demoting him from full
Secretary status he already enjoyed as Director CBI. In sending a message
to the Enforcement Directorate that relatives of Prime Ministers who are
also friends of Congress presidents are protected, he has discovered that
moving Mr Bezbaruah is more difficult than moving a mountain. These
bureaucratic hurdles again! He could only do it by really promoting him to
Additional Secretary but that would savage the message. Also caution, like
greatness, has been thrust upon him. The Patna High Court are probing
Joginder Singh's dismissal and the judges want to see the file.
Some may think the Prime Minister is shooting himself in the foot, others
that he is accident prone, still others that he has suicidal tendencies;
all must agree that he has become an object of ridicule. Laloo is sounding
the death knell of the Janata Dal and Congress are saying that Sitaram
Barkis is willin' - to take advantage of the Prime Minister's discomfiture
and pull him down. If Mr Gujral expected gratitude from Kesri and Congress
and Sonia, he was looking in a dark room for a black cat that wasn't there.
It must also be said that the Prime Minister was ill-served by his Finance
Minister, the Revenue Secretary and by the Home Secretary - the Home
Minister does not count. Mr Chidambaram set out to protect. lain so
obviously that he has been thoroughly exposed and his motives questioned.
Nothing daunted lie wants to chair the Economic Intelligence Unit, a
coordinating body for economic intelligence started in 1985 and which fell
into disuse almost immediately thereafter for reasons which need not detain
us, except to note that it always remained under the Revenue Secretary. The
Minister's action makes it Possible to "personally monitor" selected VIP
cases without the need to issue memos which have a habit of turning up in
newspaper offices.
The Revenue Secretary should have stood his ground instead of howling at
the Director of Enforcement to let lain go and then pleading helplessness
in the face of advice from above. The Home Secretary always wanted R C
Sharma to head the CBI; it is not known whether he too was under orders or
whether it was his own decision. Clearly it could have had nothing to do
with the merits. Did he point out, as it was his duty to do, that the
removal of Joginder Singh could not be justified on the file and that if
the excuse was to say he was being. promoted, it just would not wash? With
so many people doing their own thing and all dancing to tunes played in the
dark and emanating from quarters that as Narasimha Rao said in another
context. they could not resist, the stage was set for the performance of
disrepute and disgust.
The time has come for the Prime Minister to go. If it is said that the
result will be chaos let me recall that when the Mahatma was told what
would happen if the British left, he invited them to leave India to chaos.
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