So once again, we have a situation were the buck is stopped at a stonewall that cannot be breached! The only comfort now is that the hapless janta of the nation are in the company of honourable Judges themselves. Both are clueless and curious over what is more scandalous: the various scams that dog the day or the sham investigations into them! Hear the SC Judge’s lament: ‘…if a shoddy job is done at the lower rung, then we call upon the CBI, but if the CBI itself is seen to be doing a shoddy job and is being partial then what do we do?…’
To call someone a liar is deemed defamatory. To say that someone lied is less so. But when dealing with lawmen one has to be careful even in that tenuous territory. So when the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) assured the SC that the CBI had not shared its report on Coalgate with anybody he was not exactly lying, we must assume. But the SC was indeed lied to. Slip of the legal tongue. Got it? The truth was that, contrary to the ASG’s averment, the Attorney General of India, the nation’s highest law officer took the CBI chief along to meet the law minister Ashwani Kumar to discuss and make ‘necessary changes’ in the report. The Apex Court was naturally horrified to see the pendulam swing between a blatant lie and blunt truth in a jiffy as also at the way the CBI has been compromised.
The scenario gets more sordid as senior law officers and top sleuths bare all their dirty linen in public with nary a restraint. The ASG quit in quick time and also passed the buck to the GAG saying that it was at the latter’s instance that he told the court the original ‘untruth’. The CBI chief was more candid in claiming that it was quite in order for the CBI to interact and share info with ministers. With that even the notional credibility that one attached to the idea of independence of the CBI vanished. Now, why would the law minister want to know in advance about the report? Does he go through this formality for all the CBI cases? Aah, Coalgate is a mega scam, but importantly, as in 2G, the needle of suspicion has been pointing at the PM. Not that the CBI will implicate MSingh, but is it not the bounden duty of the law minister to check out, just in case? Courts and citizens be damned, political bosses have to be served, whatever the price!
The report, in fact, was shared with the PMO too but the law minister and only the law minister will have to take the rap now. It’s no surprise that Ashwani Kumar is going the ARaja way. But though metaphorical scapegoats, they are no lambs themselves, as such. Still, their isolation and sacrifice to propitiate and protect the High Command and Higher Commands in the Cong is a ritual that happens by rote and remote. After all, MSingh and Madam Signora are sacrosanct, beyond reproach. On the contrary, they seem perfectly at ease to be perched on the pedestal and preach about honesty and national interest even when their whole edifice is nothing but a mountain of dirt!
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It was high time the PMK bluff was called. The party and its founder, Dr Ramadoss have been testing the limits of law for long in word and deed. The incendiary outpourings of its leaders and the raw violence of its cadres cannot be tolerated by any civilised society. On paper, the Dr’s prescriptions would seem very pious: prohibition, personal character, tirade against movie mania and all that. But it is when they seek to propound their schemes through foul, provocative speeches and implement the project through rotten eggs and tomatoes, uprooted trees, burnt buses and looted shops that you get a real taste of the PMK. The party’s founding principle is arson.
Though not a pioneer, Dr Ramadoss personified caste politics in TN it all its ugly facet. This medical doctor chose to specialise and practice in the lucrative social justice ward, post Mandal in the late ‘80s. And he prospered as did many a political buccaneer who knew how to navigate in the quota quagmire. The initial upsurge of Vanniar resentment that launched him into prominence had abated long ago. But somehow he and his party survived and even succeeded in extracting political deals grossly disproportionate to their true strength. Needless to add, his family is the sole example of how Vanniars have ‘gained’ by the advent of the PMK. However, last Assembly polls pushed the PMK into political wilderness, its right abode. Now Ramadoss & Son have been put in place too, if you see the drift. And that is quite a bitter pill for the doctor, so used to soft treatments, to swallow!
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