While its regional warriors fight the Congress wolves, BJP’s Delhi Sultanate is almost comatose
They are so useless. They have allowed the wily Congress government in Delhi and its bloodhounds to constantly create trouble for their regional warriors like Modi and even Yeddyurappa. Earlier it were just the governors, now the Central Government is craftily misusing the office of the Lokayukt to hunt, harass, defame, and destabilize the BJP and NDA governments in various states. They are employing every possible means to achieve their dirty objectives.
This is a clear indication of how an all-powerful Lokpal or Lokayutkt can be a willing pawn in the hands of cunning political opponents and over-enthusiastic, misguided, and partisan activists to target and undermine an elected government. The kind of power the ombudsman will be invested with will make him belligerent and even megalomaniacal. He will have an inherent tendency to go after the Chief Executive to assert his supremacy. I am now of the firm belief that Lokpal should be reporting to the executive and its role should merely be recommendatory. The executive cannot deliver results when all its energies are being wasted in fighting an adversarial Lokpal.
The recent developments in Karnataka and now in Gujarat are a wake-up call. As it is, the Congress government has been after Narendra Modi, and had used every dirty trick in its bag to hound him out. After what happened in Karnataka, they have realized that the Lokayukt can also be used as a weapon to debilitate and destroy Modi. And they did not wait for long to evolve their latest conspiracy and to put it into action immediately after Yeddyurappa’s exit.
What did the BJP’s Delhi leadership achieve finally by dumping and sacrificing Yeddyurappa over Santosh Hegde’s legally dubious report? If we were given to believe that it would strengthen the hands of BJP’s Delhi sultanate in waging an effective war against the corrupt Sonia/Manmohan government, that did not seem to happen. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, and Jaitley could not even pin the government down over the issue inside the Parliament with their flowery, and at times, regime-friendly speeches. Their rhetorical half-hearted fulminations met with effective rebuttals from the treasury benches.
The media did not even bother to highlight their speeches. They were openly accused by it of having entered into some kind of a deal with the Congress party. The media had a much more exciting and newsworthy story developing on the streets of Delhi. The worst happened when Hazare refused to differentiate them from the corrupt Congress politicians. They are as good or as bad as Sonia, Manmohan, and Kapil Sibbal today. And they have legitimized Hazare as the touchstone of honesty now.
The megalomaniac will soon be issuing ‘certificates of honesty, integrity, and patriotism’ to the political class, guided by advisors like Mallika Sarabhai, Medha Patkar, Prashant Bhushan, and Teesta Setalwad. By the way, the first of such certificates has gone to Vilasrao Deshmukh, the kingpin of the Aadarsh scam, who has the ears of Hazare. One hopes Modi gives a befitting reply to Hazare in case he dares to butt in over the Lokayukt issue in Gujarat. He must turn the whole thing into Modi and Gujarat vs. Hazare and his secularist friends. The megalomaniac must be checkmated on the soil of Gujarat.
On the other hand, the Congress party did not dump Sheila Dikshit in spite of various reports that indicted her. Yeddyurappa may soon be in jail even if there is no direct evidence of corruption against him. We have seen how in all cases where politicians are involved, the judges don’t bother about established procedures, and invariably deny legitimate applications for bail, and dispatch them to jails. Sheila Dikshit will remain safe and even if she is removed, will be made a Cabinet minister.
In Karnataka, an obviously partisan Santosh Hegde, who seemed to be perfectly in tune with Swami Agnivesh’s line of pro-Congress thinking in advising Hazare to break his fast, chose to bypass the state government and delivered his report first to the media and immediately afterwards to Governor Bhardwaj, a Congress stooge. Bhardwaj, without even reading the finer details of the report or even consulting the new Chief Minister, sanctioned Yeddyurappa’s prosecution, brazenly usurping the powers of the state government. His act called for vociferous and bitter protest by the Delhi BJP leaders.
However, they chose to ignore the governor’s action that had thrown all federal principles to the wind. Next, it will be Narendra Modi and the 9 to 5 BJP leadership of Delhi seem totally unconcerned about it. They are not even enraged by the blatant act of the Gujarat Governor of appointing the Lokayukt unilaterally, obviously at the behest of the Central government, flouting all federal principles and murdering the spirit of our Constitution. At least, Advani should have come out openly against this but what we hear is his eloquent silence. Jaitley and Swaraj mentioned the issue cursorily in their Lokpal speeches in an academic sort of way.
The central leadership of BJP had also watched silently when the motivated and partisan SC judges singled out Gujarat and the Modi government for a special treatment. They twisted and pulverized every judicial norm and almost took over the powers of the executive in the state. They created Special Investigating Teams (SITs) and in an unprecedented manner, ordered trials and retrials of the Gujarat cases, circumventing the local courts and police.
The SC even took cognizance of individual complaints and intervened in the cases of police encounters of known criminals. Hundreds of such criminals are killed every year by the police of different states. The SC did not care to look into those cases with such seriousness. The Congress government missed no opportunity to put hurdles in Modi’s ways, even if it meant insulting the Gujarat legislature and the people of the state. It refused to ratify laws passed by the Gujarat Assembly and encouraged the officers of the state cadre to tell lies and subvert Modi.
Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Jaitley, and the rest of the BJP’s Delhi sultanate should have effectively countered the conspiracies of the Congress and stood up in defense of its brave regional satraps who fought hard against a hostile and vengeful Congress government. On the contrary, they seem to have been cutting deals with the ruling party, and bailing it out in its moments of crisis. And it is no more a hidden secret. One does not understand the over-eagerness of BJP to come to the government’s aid all the time either by diluting their stand on critical issues, or by not developing a cohesive strategy and response to their wily opponent’s moves.
While they are so keen to help Manmohan tide over his crises, they fail to show similar alacrity and concern for Modi when he fights the crisis created by Manmohan and his government. They act like the B team of Congress.
If they are really concerned about maintaining their clean white image to ascend the Delhi throne in 2014, let this writer give them a reality check. Nobody in this country would like to see Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Jaitley, Rajnath Singh and the others in the Prime Minister’s chair. In fact, the very idea is depressing even for hard-core BJP supporters and sympathizers who are deeply disgusted by their political ineptitude and armchair variety of reactive parliamentary politics. These leaders are bereft of ideas and hardly have any strategy in place to meet political, electoral, administrative, and socio-cultural challenges. They cannot capitalize on opportunities and seem to believe in coming to power by default.
I recall how Vajpayee went on fast over the dismissal of the Kalyan Singh government by the then UP governor Romesh Bhandari. The governors of Karnataka and Gujarat have done worse than what Bhandari did. However, it does not seem to be an issue worth a strong agitation and fight-back by Advani, Jaitley, and Sushma Swaraj. They have not stalled the proceedings of the Lok Sabha even for a minute over this issue. They should have taken the battle to the Supreme Court calling for its immediate intervention over the obviously mala-fide and partisan acts of the governors of Karnataka and Gujarat. They should have been fighting on streets and in courts, and in the Parliament over the murder of the federal spirit of the Indian Constitution. They should have been creating a deafening media uproar.
Why aren’t they doing the obvious? Is it because they fear and hate Modi as much as the Islamists and Sonia do and would like to see him dead? Don’t they realize that Modi’s fall will spell the doom of BJP? Don’t they? Are they so self-absorbed with their personal political objectives that they cannot think clearly any more?
And the people of Gujarat must understand the Governor’s game more than anyone else. A pro-Congress Lokayukt, and Justice R A Mehta obviously seems to be one of those, can even question the concessions Modi granted to Tata Motors to get the Nano plant in the state.
Some say Mehta is Anna's man since he stayed at Mehta's house when he visited Gujarat in May 2011. That is when Hazare's opinion about Modi underwent a sea change. Swami Agnivesh was also Anna's man until a week back so are Medha Patkar and Mallika Sarabhai, all Modi haters, and known for colluding with the Congress party to fix Modi. I am sure Medha Patkar and Prashant Bhushan are the other Congress sympathizers and moles in Anna team. We must also examine the background of the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court and the circumstances behind his appointment a few years back and what is it that has made him so pro-active in fixing Modi.
RKS
