The three-week Monsoon Session of Parliament is about to end, with just two days to go, and every fear about how useful it would be seems to be coming true. On account of the multiple scandals surfacing in the run-up to the Parliament session, it was evident that the days ahead would be beset with political bitterness between the ruling BJP and the Opposition, especially the Congress, the BJP’s principal political foe on the map of India to such an extent that the BJP’s slogan is a “Congress-mukt Bharat”, or an India liberated of the Congress.
The cascading information about the role of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in the Lalit Modi affair, and that of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Chouhan in respect of the Vyapam case, which is being looked upon with the deepest suspicion nationally, in the eyes of the Congress, made its demand for the resignation of these key figures legitimate as the first order of business.
The country needs to discuss whether such an approach is right or wrong in the background of the development that the government ruled out any resignations. Then it offered a discussion in Parliament on the role of the external affairs minister in case the Opposition was interested. The unmistakable signal was that the debate was only of academic interest. This seemed an unfortunate and, in the light of subsequent events, unproductive, approach.
In a democracy that we might look up to, it would be pretty much standard practice for public officials to sit out until their name is cleared if there is the smallest suspicion. This is not a legal or a constitutional requirement. It is larger than that. It links to the ethics of the system, the morality of the rulers.
Democracy runs on the trust of the governed which is the first principal of “raj dharma” of which former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had reminded the chief minister of Gujarat in 2002. This is why numerous public figures — across party lines — have resigned (or were made to resign) without an FIR being posted against them. Lal Bahadur Shastri, L.K. Advani, George Fernandes (in the first NDA government) are prominent examples. The Modi government’s approach stands in stark contrast.
It was evident that its move to bring the land acquisition law through the ordinance route had come a cropper, leaving only the GST Bill as a strong pro-reform measure in the Monsoon Session. To safeguard it, an independent probe could easily have been announced in the Lalit Modi affair. But the tactics of the ruling party seemed focused on “isolating” the Congress, rather than getting a job done. This is the way to bankrupt oneself.
