The Boomerang Effect

Congress
Has Narasimha Rao masterminded the charge sheeting of prominent politicians?
No one can say for sure. What is undeniable is that it was the Supreme Court which setthe pace of the investigation and forced the Government to take action against politiciansnamed in the biggest scam in post-independence India. In fact, there is reason to believethat Rao, who bore direct responsibility for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)since he was in charge of the Ministry for Personnel, ran a great risk of being personallycensured by the Supreme Court for the CBI’s inaction against politicians involved inthe case. To that extent the permission for the chargesheets was a pre-emptive measure.

What cannot be ignored, however, is the selective sanction to prosecute only a fewpoliticians. Almost all those implicated, from L.K. Advani to Balram Jakhar, believe thatRao has used the CBI as a political weapon to hit at his opponents and potential rivals.One of the ministers who had to put in his papers after the CBI told the Supreme Courtthat it had sought sanction to prosecute him, is downright abusive about Rao in privateconversations. Rao may not have masterminded the crisis per se, but he definitely seemedto be taking full advantage of it once it became inevitable.

Will Rao benefit from the revelations?
It is difficult to say. The Congress is in complete turmoil at the moment. As many asseven Congress Working Committee (CWC) members, including K. Karunakaran, Jakhar andRajesh Pilot, have sought a meeting of the CWC to discuss the issue. Also, within theparty Rao’s stock as a dependable ally has hit an all-time low. This is soparticularly because of the manner in which he dumped his favourite hatchet man V.C.Shukla. On the morning of January 16, the day the CBI was to tell the Supreme Court aboutthe charge-sheets, Rao had a lengthy meeting with Shukla and discussed the Governmentagenda for the short Parliament session slated to be held next month. Shukla had no clueas to what was in store and later left for his home state Madhya Pradesh secure that hewas still Rao’s confidant. The CBI move hit him like a bolt from the blue. EvenShukla’s detractors in the Union ministry are aghast. "If Rao cannot protectShukla, no one should rely on him," says a minister. There are also signs that withsome more ministers likely to be chargesheeted, a sizeable group of Congress leaders couldbecome natural allies against the Prime Minister. Rao loyalists are confident, however,that the tainted leaders cannot mount a serious challenge to his leadership. But on theflip side, with the battle for general elections approaching, Rao cannot afford to be thelonely general with all his officers revolting against him or being re ndered hors decombat.

Has Rao neutralised the corruption issue?
That is what Rao supporters would like to believe. "Is hamaam mein sab nangehain," says a loyalist, confident that corruption will not be a major issue inthe election after leaders from every political party have been tainted with the samebrush. But the fact remains that  over 60 per cent of the hawala money recipientscome from the Congress. Also, Rao will find it difficult to defend himself against thecharge that, but for the hawala scam where his hand was forced by the judiciary, his trackrecord of acting against ministers charged with corruption has been extremely poor. Ministers like C.K. Jaffer Sharief (pilloried for the ABB deal and indicted by aParliamentary committee) and Kalpnath Rai (of the sugar scam fame) were dropped not oncorruption charges, but on account of political expediency. Sukh Ram continues in theCabinet despite his  indictment in the sugar import case way back in 1989. Rao tookalmost 20 months to remove Union ministers B. Shankaranand and Rameshwar Thakur after theJoint Parliamentary Committee submitted its report indicting them in the security scam.And not everyone entirely disbelieves Harshad Mehta’s allegations of having paid Rs 1crore to the Prime Minister.

There is also the danger of the BJP coming out much cleaner than the Congress,particularly if Advani manages to get the chargesheet against him quashed. Already havingretrieved some ground by taking a moral stand and resigning promptly from the Lok Sabha,Advani is fairly confident that the charges against him will not stick because of a weakchargesheet.

Rao will also have to fend off charges about having accepted the tainted money. Afterall, the same S.K. Jain, whose diaries form the basis of the charges against the majorpoliticians, has stated under interrogation that he paid the Prime Minister a sum of Rs3.55 crore in various instalments after his diaries were seized. Rao can-not deny, forinstance, that in September 1993 he  took a delegation of industrialists to SouthKorea and China which included B.R. Jain much after the hawala scam had come to light in1991. Some of Rao’s detractors are planning to implead themselves in the hawalapetition with the demand that the S.K. Jain interrogation report, which has been includedin the CBI case diary, be made public. Some of this mud is bound to stick to Rao’simage.

What will the incriminated Congress ministers and leaders do?
There are signs that they are coming together. Balram Jakhar and Madhavrao Scindia(who have been chargesheeted) are in regular touch with Rajesh Pilot whose name alsofigures in the list of recipients. Leaders like Karunakaran and Sharad Pawar have alsoexpressed solidarity with them and efforts to rope in Sonia Gandhi have gained momentum.Some of these leaders could gang up against Rao in the CWC meeting which they havedemanded and seek to turn the tables on him. If that happens, the CWC meeting could be thestormiest ever in recent times and Rao would Whatbewill at the thecentre of the hostility.With his loyalistmin- Shukla now antagonised and Dhawan also in the list, Rao’ssupporters have begun to dwindle alarmingly.

How is the morale in the Congress?
Not very high right now. The morale was already low on account of the string ofreverses in various Assembly elections since the last Lok Sabha poll. The state of theparty’s organisation has been abysmal, particularly in the northern states of Biharand Uttar Pradesh, as well as in Maharashtra and West Bengal. Now with Arjun Singh out ofthe party, and leaders with considerable electoral influence like Scindia and Shuklasidelined by the hawala charges, the going in Madhya Pradesh could become tou gher. To addto the party’s woes, the outlook in the southern states does not appear too brighteither. Rao loyalists, however, are hoping that his desperate chargesheet gamble willinfuse new life into the party and it will scrape through in the polls.

Will there be more chargesheets?
There are bound to be. There are several others who figure in Jain’s list, suchas Union minister and CWC member R.K. Dhawan, Rajesh Pilot, governors P. Shiv Shankar andMotilal Vora, and Delhi BJP Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana. The Supreme Court will wantto know why they have been left out. The next hearing in the hawala case in the SupremeCourt is on January 30. The CBI will have to add to the list of those chargesheeted tosatisfy the court. Indeed, there will be more chargesheets as well as resignations.

The BJP
What will happen to L.K. Advani?
Advani’s tenure as the party president continues till November 1997. So, as thehead of the BJP, he will continue to be a major player in the national polity till then.The BJP president also managed to attain the halo of a martyr by resigning his membershipof the Lok Sabha even as he denied the charges vehemently. He also has the advantage ofhaving one of the weakest chargesheets among those filed so far. If his plea forexpeditious hearing of the case is adhered to and he manages to get the benefit of doubt,he will emerge stronger than ever before. Advani’s biggest advantage in the case isthat the CBI in its chargesheet has not even specified the date he received the hawalamoney as a public servant. Advani detractors are, of course, hoping that the CBI has anace up its sleeve and will file something more tenable at a later date.

What turn will the Advani-Murli Manohar Joshi battle take?
Joshi will try to use this opportunity for his perennial war of attrition with Advani.Unfortunately for Joshi, Advani still has the backing of the Rashtriya Sewa Sangh (RSS),which is not too enamoured of the ways of the former party president. Significantly, Joshiis the only BJP president who has not been given a second consecutive term in office.Joshi also loses out on the Atal Behari Vajpayee factor. If Vajpayee gains furtherdominance, Joshi is bound to be even more sidelined. For it is no secret that the moderateface of the BJP is not pleased with the hardline stance of Joshi.

It is unlikely that Joshi can re-emerge at the cost of Advani. Even if Advani’sfortunes were to decline, it would be Vajpayee who would gain and not Joshi.

What impact will the revelations have on the party’s poll prospects ?
The BJP has already got a headstart over other political parties in the campaign. Butwhere the party may suffer is on the score of corruption which it was planning to raise asthe major issue in the upcoming elections. Now with the hawala issue reinforcing thepublic impression of most politicians being corrupt, it may not perceive corruption as themajor issue. The BJP’s image of being a clean party has also got somewhat sulliedbecause of the renegotiated Enron deal, and this could have a bearing on the party’sperformance, particularly in Maharashtra. Bihar would also pose a problem because of theresignation of Yashwant Sinha and Delhi may not escape the reverberations of the scam ifthe Government goes ahead with a chargesheet against Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana.Another problem in Delhi is that there does not appear to be any acceptable alternative toKhurana.

National Front-Left Front
How will the scam affect the NF-LF?
Of all the political formulations, it is perhaps the Left leaders alone who haveremained untainted by the scam. They are bound to use corruption as a major issue toconsolidate their position in strongholds like West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. As far asthe National Front is concerned, two of its leaders, Janata Dal President S.R. Bommai andJanata Dal Parliamentary Party leader, Sharad Yadav figure among the recipients. Of thetwo, Sharad Yadav has already made a clean breast of having received the money withoutknowing of its hawala origins and of having spent it on the party. Bommai has denied thecharges completely. So far no chargesheets have been filed against either of the leaders.The JD is hoping this is because of the lack of "clinching evidence", but Raocould well hit them at a later date. If tenable chargesheets are indeed filed, the JanataDal, which was born out of corruption charges against the Congress ala Bofors, couldsuffer a dent in its image.

The main advantage the party has, however, is that its strong-holds exist not becauseof the image of its senior leaders at the national level but on account of powerfulregional satraps like Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav in Bihar and Chief Minister H.D.Deve Gowda in Karnataka. The charges may not affect its showing as dramatically as it mayin the case of the Congress and the BJP.