Is ‘finger-pointing’ getting excessive?
Not long after he finished reading out a litany of corruption complaints against BJP president Nitin Gadkari, India Against Corruption leader Arvind Kejriwal — responding to a purported threat from Union law minister Salman Khurshid — announced that he had been sent into the world to accomplish a “mission”.
Done with going after Robert Vadra and Salman Khurshid, the man who has seen the light trained his guns on Mr Gadkari on Wednesday, but there was a difference. He demanded no probe, “independent” or otherwise, as he had in the case of Mr Vadra and Mr Khurshid. The BJP top brass were relieved as they felt there was not much to answer in the allegations against their chief.
Proving the allegations Mr Kejriwal makes is for others to do, he himself has said since he mounted the moral high horse. He has no plans to go to court with any of the allegations he has made against anyone. Those he seeks to accuse will be quite right to ask if, under the law, it is not for the accuser to provide the evidence to make his case convincing. Although nothing has been shown to be illegal in the Vadra case, and the presumed illegality in the Gadkari case (where the charge is of sitting on government lands) is sought not to be pursued, what is it all about in the end?
It has been noted that everything Mr Kejriwal said about Mr Gadkari has already been said in Maharashtra, in the media and outside it. This raises the suspicion that the IAC supremo wished no more than to seek to tarnish Mr Gadkari from his “pulpit”, which has been made high-profile by obliging television stations; that Mr Kejriwal has insinuated himself into inner-BJP squabbles; that he has obliged anti-Gadkari factions in the BJP leadership which aim to knock their chief out before the race for Prime Minister is joined as they reckon it would be otherwise hard to dislodge him from the competition since he has been handpicked by the RSS.
Another aspect of the same narrative is that Mr Gadkari is a beneficiary of the largesse of the Maharashtra government and is thus compromised as president of the largest Opposition party. But Mr Kejriwal himself came under blistering attack on Thursday from a retired senior Mumbai police officer who has accused the IAC boss of being mixed up with the “irregular” actions of NCP founder chief Sharad Pawar. Overall, all the finger-pointing can mean anything if accusers approach the courts.
Everything has become so confusing that the “war of perceptions”, which some say Mr Kejriwal is winning, is becoming too muddied to do our polity any good.
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