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Mainstream, Vol XLIX, No 8, February 12, 2011

Congress: Disgrace Abounding

Saturday 19 February 2011, by Nikhil Chakravartty

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FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

The opening of the St Kitts case brings in a new dimension to the corruption and misdeeds of those who had been in power till yesterday. From the Bofors to the telecom scandals one was getting accustomed to the maxi-bribery involved by Ministers in office—in short, what’s called the kickback category. Compared to it, the house allotment scam and the petrol pump distribution apart from the fodder scam scandal are a part of corrupt deals in which money passed through illegal channels.

Whatever has come out of the St Kitts case in the last seven years, it was a case of forgery, pure and simple, sought to be perpetrated as a weapon of political rivalry and jealousy. Instead of the stabbing knife and the revolver, forgery was brought in to destroy a rival politically.

What was the gist of the St Kitts story? Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who was the Finance Minister under Rajiv Gandhi, fell out with him mainly because of the Bofors kickback scandal and also because of the German submarine deal contracted under Indira Gandhi and then sought to be extended under her son. V.P. Singh broke with the Rajiv Government and left the Congress to form the Janata Dal which challenged the Congress. It was at that crucial point that the Rajiv establishment hatched the piece of forgery to implicate V.P. Singh and his son, Ajeya, for having secretly tucked away a huge sum of money in a non-descript bank in St Kitts. An operator for the plot was made available by the genius of Chandraswami who incidentally was close to quite a few in the Rajiv establishment. Some of the journalists known to be close to the Rajiv establishment, played up the concocted story and it was widely given out that V.P. Singh and his progeny were no less corrupt than the brood which took the kickback from the Bofors. Unfortunately, the Rajiv Government fell shortly afterwards after having lost the general elections in 1989, and an official investigation thereafter brought out the total fraud behind this plot.

How did Narasimha Rao get involved in this forgery? He was at that time the Minister of External Affairs under Rajiv Gandhi, and when he was at New York on official business, he got a message from the then Prime Minister’s Office, asking him to get an official of his Ministry posted there to attest the forged signatures of V.P. Singh and his son, as genuine. Since the case has now gone to Court, it is for Narasimha Rao to plead his case, but the fact of his having asked an official of the Ministry to attest the forged signatures as genuine can hardly be covered up. Obviously, this was not only known to quite a few of the higher-ups among the officials in the External Affairs Ministry, who have thereby become abettors to this forgery committed under instructions from the Minister in charge, that is, Narasimha Rao himself.

A fairy tale in circulation nowadays is that Rajiv Gandhi himself was not a party to the St Kitts forgery. This is a matter for the Court to decide, but it is obvious that the then Minister of External Affairs (that is, Narasimha Rao himself) would not have got involved in the fraud unles it was to please—or maybe not to displease—his boss, that is, the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. Judging by evidence available so far to the public, it would be difficult to believe that Rajiv Gandhi was unaware of this case of blatant forgery to defame V.P. Singh, who had already became Rajiv’s political bete noire. It would be playing on the credulity of the public to think that Dhawan (or, whoever he might be from the Prime Minister’s Office) could have on his own, without the knowledge of the boss, asked the then Foreign Minister, Narasimha Rao, to arrange for the attestation of the forged signatures.

The St Kitts case has thus had many ramifications. It is not just a case of financial misappropriation. It is a case of forgery indulged in for political purpose—which demarcates it from cases of financial corruption. The St Kitts case has brought out that the political adversary is now sought to be fought by accredited leaders—including a Prime Minister and another Prime Minister-to-be—by means which are nothing but recourse to fraud and criminal act of forging signatures. If the case is coming up now after seven years, it only underlines the degeneracy of the entire functioning of party politics in our times. The Congress, which at one time set the ground rules of political functioning in our country, has now touched the depths of degeneracy when its leaders started having recourse to criminal action such as forgery to fight rivals and mislead the public.

A matter of serious concern for all media people is that in the St Kitts affair, some of the well-known figures in journalism played the dirty game as PR for a forgery. This is largely because some of these journalists became the sycophants of the ruling establishment, instead of its monitor and guide. These made a mockery of the entire concept of investigative journalism by broadcasting so-called reports from supposed to be “inside sources”. In fact, these were nothing more than the hand-outs of those who were cooking forgery to mislead the public. One of these journalists who had taken leave from his editor on the plea of going on a “honeymoon trip”, actually had a jaunt to St Kitts at the expense of the plotters of this fraud but his editor did not oblige him as he refused to publish those bogus reports. Later on, this so-called investigative journalist had to leave the paper, but he was provided with a berth in the government media, thanks to the generous backing of a former Minister. The media, which had done such a yeoman service by digging up most of the mysteries of the Bofors kickback deal, needs to take note of this dirty trick by some of its practitioners involved in the St Kitts case. It is to be expected that the truth will be out about the forgery and the responsibility pinpointed on the culprits. Obviously, the question of ordering the attestation of the forged signature has to be faced by Narasimha Rao. What the public would like to know is not only the veracity or otherwise of this very serious allegation, but also the identity of the others involved in this dirty affair.

The St Kitts case has shown up the calibre of not only the politicians involved in it, but also of senior bureaucrats who have disgraced themselves with ignominy in the eyes of the public. And if the whole story is out, it will be a test case for the Congress to decide whether such soiled hands should be allowed to continue as Congressmen at all, since the murky case is bound to besmirch not only them but the Congress itself to which they all claim to belong.

Disgrace abounding for the Congress as the St Kitts skeleton has tumbled out of the cup-board.
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(Mainstream, October 5, 1996)

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