Allegations about Ambani brothers'
Swiss bank accounts by Kejriwal
UPA & Media on same wavelength
Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party cannot just
be dismissed as an irresponsible individual of no consequence. When he made
allegations against BJP President Nitin Gadkari the Congress-led UPA government
took these as gospel of truth immediately going into action, raiding certain
concerns connected with him and demanding his resignation from the Party. In
about two months, despite best efforts the government has, so far, failed to
come out with any concrete evidence against him or arrive at any conclusion on
the allegations. Obviously, keeping the issue hanging, in the long run, serves
the Congress political and electoral interests.
But it is quite a different story as far as
Kejriwal's disclosure of the account numbers of Ambani Brothers in Swiss banks is
concerned. It must remain one of the rarest of the rare cases in which the
matter ended just with the offices of the Ambani brothers, separately, denying
the allegation and the Congress instead of going into the concrete details
about the bank accounts asked, on the contrary, Kejriwal to present further
evidence. One wonders is the account number not sufficient to initiate an
inquiry?
More surprising is the attitude of the media which
every now and then keeps alive the allegations, so far not proved, to demand
Gadkari's resignation but has felt completely satisfied with the denial of the
allegations by Ambani brothers. One has not heard anything about the matter
from the day the allegations surfaced and instant denial by Ambanis. Media is
now treating the matter as closed for all intents and purposes. Had it been
some other individual or politician, media would have been in race to post-mortem
the truth about the allegations as a part of what it claims to be its unchallenged
right to 'investigative journalism'.
It is not the first of the case in which persons
complained against have denied the allegations in so many words. But media has
never taken such denials on their face value. It burns midnight oil to prove
the denials wrong, as it had done, in the past, in a number of cases.
It remains beyond comprehension why has the media
and the UPA government closed any inquiry into the serious Kejriwal disclosures
about Ambani brothers' Swiss accounts just on their simple denials and not went
ahead with investigations?
There is no gainsaying the fact that the ruling
party is always not impartial and has its own political and electoral axe to
grind, like in the cases against BSP chief Miss Mayawati and Samajwadi Party
supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. But what has sent our media blind, deaf and dumb
on the allegations against Ambani brothers because, otherwise, it claims to be
free, fearless and impartial. But is it so in the case of Ambani brothers? The
doubt persists. The media owes an explanation to the people.
