Last week the Pathak Commission probing
the Volcker Report gave the Congress party a clean chit. Also last week,
Mr. Arun Singh emerged from the shadows after two decades to remind us
of Bofors. Years ago the Joint Parliamentary Committee probing the
Bofors case had given the government a clean chit.
Mr. Arun Singh told his interviewer, Mr. Shekhar Gupta: “I did not
take any money – that I am 100 per cent sure of. For the rest I cannot
say, but I would have found out. I don’t think he stopped me on the
ground he did, that is my perception.” In other words Rajiv Gandhi
prevented the truth from coming out. Corruption has never really been
the issue. The real issue was always the cover-up of corruption.
The name
of the game is politics. Politicians never convict each other. They
destroy reputations. They never fight corruption. They fight political
opponents.
Remember Mr. VP Singh flashing a secret
bank account number before becoming PM, and going silent after becoming
PM?
Mr. Arun Singh’s recent disclosure was promptly seized by Mr. Arun
Jaitley. He wrote a newspaper article recalling the official
machinations which prevented the Bofors truth from coming out.
Predictably, he blamed the Congress. But what about those years when he
served as Assistant Solicitor-General in Mr. VP Singh’s government and
as a cabinet minister in Mr. Vajpayee’s government? Mr. Jaitley wrote: “Barring
the two non-Congress governments headed by VP Singh and Atal Behari
Vajpayee, the role of the political executive continuously was to
prevent the truth from coming out.” His memory seems to have lapsed.
During Mr. VP Singh’s tenure the now defunct Independent daily from
Mumbai published the authenticated text of official Swedish documents
containing messages sent by the Swedish embassy in New Delhi to its
government in Stockholm. These documents are part of the official record
of the parliamentary consultative committee in Sweden. The text revealed
that Mr. Arun Nehru was for some time the central figure negotiating the
Bofors contract on behalf of the Indian government, even though he was
neither in the ministry concerned nor officially authorized to do so.
The documents revealed that “absolute secrecy” was cited as a
precondition for the deal. According to the documents Mr. Arun Nehru
insisted that neither Rajiv Gandhi’s name nor his own should ever be
revealed in connection with the Bofors deal. No middleman or Indian
representative for Bofors was to be allowed. The contract would be
assured if the “political aspect” was taken care of. Asked to
clarify meaning of “political aspect”, it was described as “political
understanding in the widest sense of the term”. The documents
recounted the visit of former Bofors head Mr. Martin Ardbo to India and
his meetings with Mr. Arun Nehru.
These exposures appeared in India while Mr. VP Singh was prime minister.
Yet the government neither investigated the information nor questioned
Mr. Arun Nehru who was a cabinet minister. When confronted with this
inexplicable lapse, Mr. VP Singh gave his characteristic reply: “Let the
law take its own course.”
Now some people are excited by Mr. Arun Singh’s hint that Rajiv Gandhi
stood in the way of the Bofors truth coming out. The irony is that what
Mr. Arun Singh has haltingly hinted at now, was presented as
authenticated fact on June 14, 1987. That was the day when President
Zail Singh was petitioned for permission to prosecute Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi under sections 120 (B), 161 and 165 of the Indian Penal
Code and section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act – all these
sections read with section 109 of Indian Penal Code. The government’s
FIR registered in the Bofors case on January 22, 1990 cited precisely
these same sections.
The petition to President Zail Singh rested on evidence that India’s
ambassador to Sweden, Mr. Bhupat Ozha, had communicated with the
government to say while payments had indeed been made in connection with
the Bofors deal, they were not made for the “winning of the contract”.
In other words, payments were not made to official middlemen.
Subsequently Mr. Ozha wrote a book in which he recounted his experiences
of that time. According to law it is a crime for any government official
to withhold knowledge about any conspiracy to defraud the state if he or
she is privy to such information. Under this law the available evidence,
if correct, suggested that both Rajiv Gandhi and Mr. Arun Nehru were
guilty although neither may have accepted money. It may be recalled that
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi also held the Defence portfolio and had
monitored the Bofors deal. A few days after he received the
communication from our ambassador in Sweden, he misled parliament by
affirming that no payments were made in the Bofors deal. It was this
information that sustained the petition presented to President Zail
Singh. The President consulted a retired chief justice who opined that a
prima facie case did exist. However, President Zail was advised against
taking action.
It is not the intention here to revive the Bofors controversy. Others
will do that. What needs understanding is that no part of the
Establishment seems genuinely committed to rooting out corruption. The
sole motive apparently is to extract partisan advantage without
affecting the prevalent corrupt political system. Media tends to be part
of the system. The facts recounted above were shunned by some famous
editors who were crusading against the Bofors corruption. After Mr. Arun
Nehru’s name surfaced they backed off.
Will
the Oil for Food scam repeat what happened in the Bofors case? The
Pathak Commission has indicted Mr. Natwar Singh and his son Mr. Jagat
Singh for having misused their offices although neither has been accused
of accepting money. They helped family relatives and friends. Mr.
Andaleeb Sehgal and Mr. Aditya Khanna are accused of making money. But
neither Mr. Natwar Singh nor Mr. Jagat Singh was at that time in the
government. So were they misusing the offices they respectively held in
the Congress party? If that is so, how can the Congress party be given a
clean chit? It is for the Congress party to determine through an
internal inquiry whether or not Mr. Natwar Singh misused his office. By
giving a clean chit to Congress the Pathak Commission has clearly
exceeded its brief.
Will Mr. Natwar Singh, like Mr. Arun Singh, reveal all after twenty
years? He has belatedly admitted he wrote letters to Iraq’s oil
minister. Truth in driblets will merely diminish him. He should speak
up. The late President Kennedy once said that those who do not speak
when they should lose the right to speak altogether. In India things are
different. Those who speak when they should, lose their jobs, their
status, their reputations, and sometimes even friends. But guess what?
They do feel good!
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