Parliament’s time is too precious to fritter away on corruption crusades that are not grounded in fact and serve only partisan political purposes
The Supreme Court giving a clean chit to finance minister P. Chidambaram in the 2G spectrum allocation case on Friday not only clears the air on an important question, it punctures the bravado with which the Opposition parties have gone about attacking the government, especially after the Supreme Court sent former communications minister A. Raja to jail for distorting the first-come-first-served method of spectrum allocation for pecuniary considerations.
The politics of the Opposition centred on trying to trap the Congress Party in a major corruption scandal; it wouldn’t do to scalp a minister from the DMK, just a member of the ruling alliance, as far as it was concerned. This was thought important — indeed crucial — from the future electoral point of view. It is this priority in politics — flagged by leading sections of the Opposition — that has received a setback with the Supreme Court maintaining that “no material is available, even prima facie, to conclude that Chidambaram had abused his official position, or used any corrupt or illegal means for obtaining any pecuniary advantage for himself or any other persons, including Raja.”
Mr Chidambaram came into the line of fire as he was the finance minister (as he is now) when the 2G allocations were made. The reasoning was that if he had put his foot down in favour of auctioning of spectrum, Mr Raja could not conceivably have proceeded to insist on the existing system of allocating spectrum — coming down from the NDA era — on a first-come-first-served basis, and the 2G scandal could have been nipped in the bud. The nation’s highest court has clearly not been persuaded. It has upheld the clean chit given to Mr Chidambaram by a CBI court. Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy, who had taken the issue to the Supreme Court, has called the judgment “bad”, and has promised to seek a review. For practical purposes, however, the legal challenge against the finance minister and the Congress Party on this count does not survive. Nevertheless, the BJP spokesman remains adamant that Mr Chidambaram continues to be “constitutionally and politically responsible”. It is hard to see how.
From a common sense point of view — and this would make for good wholesome politics as well in this case — the BJP, as the principal Opposition party in Parliament, is expected to get on with it, and permit the finance minister to do his job. The people expect no less from the party. Parliament’s time is too precious to fritter away on corruption crusades that are not grounded in fact and serve only partisan political purposes. The sport of chasing red herrings does not constitute service to the people.
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