At last, the CBI filed a chargesheet on Saturday before a special court accusing former Union minister and DMK propaganda secretary A. Raja of conspiring with bureaucrats and business honchos to cause a loss of `30,984 crore in the allocation of 2G spectrum.
The once blue-eyed boy of chief minister M. Karunanidhi, Mr Raja is a forgotten man in Tamil Nadu politics now. Neither his party nor his bet noire Jayalalithaa speaks about/against him.
Even at the height of the poll campaign, the spectrum scam has been pushed to the backseat since the Opposition, led by Ms Jayalalithaa, trains its guns on the DMK and the dominance of Mr Karunanidhi’s family in the state’s governance and price rise. Except the Left party leaders, none of the other Opposition leaders speaks at length about the spectrum allocation.
The dalit face of the DMK, Mr Raja has been behind bars for two months now. Only a handful of the party’s leaders, including former Union minister T.R. Baalu, spokesperson T.K.S. Elangovan looked him up at Tihar. Mr Karunanidhi likened him to king Mahabali and said he was penalised for the good work to increase teledensity and bring down call charges. After that there was stony silence from the party.
If the 47-year-old DMK leader had been out of prison, he would have taken an active part in the elections.