Congress
has turned CBI its greatest political ally
Whether CBI is, in the words of the Supreme Court
of India, a "caged parrot" or the Congress Bureau of Investigation,
as the opposition, particularly the BJP prefers to call it, the fact remains
that it speaks the language Congress prompts and acts the way it teaches them
to do.
If the Congress is using the administrative
machinery to browbeat its opponents, it is only following the footsteps of its
British predecessors in indulging in repressive measures the alien
administration had been letting loose against the freedom fighters who wanted
them to leave the country independent. At the same time, the Congress equally
mastered the British art of showering generous favours on those who go out of
their way to realize its political designs by hook and crook. If you look at
the pictures of the alien rulers and police/army unleashing brutalities and
cruelties on those demonstrating against the British rulers and the present
ones in independent India, you will discern that nothing has practically
changed except that the rulers are not whites. In cases, the present democratic
administration appears to be more barbaric against its opponents than did the
alien British government. Even women and children do not get spared.
In fact, the energies of the arms of
administration – the police, crime investigating agency, income tax department, Enforcement Directorate, CBI, IB, even the National Investigating Agency (NIA) – seem to be concentrated
on realizing the single objective to
promote and protect the interests of the ruling party, to whitewash the black
spots on the face of the ruling class and to harass all its political opponents
who stand as a hurdle in catering to the whims and caprice of the rulers at
whatever cost to the nation. In fact,
the present rulers have come to make its own narrow political and electoral
interests synonymous with those of the nation.
The ruling party administration spares the rod and
spoils the ruling party recalcitrants who get pampered to indulge in more
wrongdoing, crimes and corruption. The arms of law get shortened when the
person belongs to the ruling dispensation but get longer if it is the
non-Congress parties and individuals. They get more cruel and ruthless. The
truth in this respect is all pervading.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal leveled charges of more
or less the same nature against both the then BJP national President Shri Nitin
Gadkari and Congress President Mrs.
Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra, though
in latter's case the charges were much more serious because these
involved favouritism by some Congress-ruled States. In Vadra's case the UPA
government and Congress instantly dismissed the allegations as frivolous,
baseless and motivated. The government lost no time to issue a certificate of
"innocence" to Shri Vadra. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) expressed its inability
to ”order a probe in business dealings between two private entities". But
that was equally true in the case of allegations against Shri Gadkari too. Later, the PMO claimed that "while the
Right to Information Act aims at creating transparency to contain corruption
and increase accountability, it also seeks to ensure that revelation of
information, in actual practice, does not harm or adversely affect other
important public interests which include efficient functioning of the
governments, optimum use of limited fiscal resources, and preservation of
confidentiality of sensitive information." (http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/prime-minister-s-office-refuses-to-answer-rti-query-on-robert-vadra-citing-confidentiality-378640)
The allegations against Shri Gadkari too
constituted "business
dealings between two private entities" to which the PMO claimed that it
could not order investigation. When Shri Nitin Gadkari was
likely to file his nomination for another term of office as BJP President on
January 23, 2013 the Income Tax Department conducted a raid on Shri Gadkari's
business concerns on January 22. After that both the IT Department and the
Government have gone silent. Nobody knows the outcome of the raids and
investigation. According to a Sunday Guardian report, nothing
incriminating has been established against Shri Gadkari.
In fact, CBI seems to be burning midnight oil to
function as the defence counsel for those belonging to the ruling party can and
a diehard prosecutor bent upon somehow or the other to involve those opposed to
the ruling party.
CBI conduct in the investigation into cases
concerning the 2002 Gujarat riots and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots is a case in
instance. It presented closure reports in cases against Congress leaders Sajjan
Kumar and Jagdish Tytler though it failed to realize the ruling party's
objective when the court refused to oblige. When after 29 years the court
handed out a verdict of not guilty against Sajjan Kumar it took more than two
months for the CBI to file an appeal against the judgement in the higher court.
Case against Jagdish Tytler has been reopened under court orders.
But in Gujarat, all CBI energies are concentrated
on framing the BJP leaders. Its anxiety – and of Manmohan Government – in the
Ishrat Jahan alleged fake encounter seems nothing else but only to somehow or
the other to frame Gujarat CM Shri Narinder Modi and other BJP bigwigs.
Criminal cases of assets beyond known sources of
income against former UP chief ministers, Ms Mayawati and Shri Mulayam Singh
have not been taken to their logical conclusion during the last 9 years. CBI
stand on these gets fluctuated with the change of stance of these leaders
towards the Manmohan government. In a similar case where Shri Lalu Yadav and
his wife were acquitted, CBI did not, deliberately, for understandable
political reasons, file an appeal in a higher court obviously only because he
remains steadfast to prove himself as the savior of Congress government at the
Centre in times of crises.
The CBI case against Shri Lalu Yadav in the fodder
scam continues to hang fire for the last over a decade, courtesy again of CBI,
although similar cases against officials have been decided long ago and the
guilty punished.
Another stark contrast is the CBI dilly-dallying
the investigations and prosecution of cases concerning 2G spectrum,
Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing and Coalgate scandals. Except for the
intervention of the courts, no minister responsible for the scams has been
brought to book. The investigation into
these cases is moving at a snail's pace.
Latest is the case involving the Railway Minister
Pawan Bansal. Instead of being made a co-accused, he has been made a witness.
Nobody today, as a person remarked, is willing to offer even a cup of tea if he
doesn't expect a return favour. But CBI in this case, makes people believe that
an individual of the rank of a general manager of Railways was so foolish as to
strike a Rs. 10 crore bribe deal and to part with Rs. 2 crores initially
without being certain that Bansal's nephew would be able to get from the
minister what he wants.
Actually, it is proving true the old Hindi saying:
jab saiyyan bhaye kotwal to dar kahe ka" (When the kotwal is our
benefactor, why should one worry?) It is also providing credence to the widely
accepted notion that CBI is the greatest political ally of the UPA.
When the Supreme Court directed the UPA government
to take steps to make the "caged parrot" free, all it seems to be
trying to do is to free it from the cage with freedom restricted to fly only
within a room closed from all sides under UPA supervision. It has claimed its
right to monitor, a synonym for influencing, the course of investigation in
"politically sensitive" cases. That betrays the real intentions of
the Congress. ***
