Even a lay Indian like myself who has looked at our political scene during his life-time, cannot recall a government that has hurtled into one grave scam after another, involving billions of public money, and then lie through its teeth, asserting its innocence, in a short period of eight years. That unprecedented discredit and notoriety go to the Congress-ruled UPA govt, headed by a self-acclaimed Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh. In fact, he is in office but not in power, as the Economist weekly of London, commented on it six years ago. The super Prime Minister is Mrs Sonia Gandhi who as the Congress Party President and the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance(UPA), appointed him as Prime Minister in 2004 and reappointed him in 2009, after the general elections. Manmohan Singh fought one Lok Sabha election from New Delhi but lost it to a BJP candidate. Thus, both in 2004 and 2009, he became Prime Minister, courtesy Mrs Sonia Gandhi, the head of the ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, not as a popularly elected Member of the Lok Sabha, the House of People, as conventionally required, but as a member of the Rajya Sabha, an indirect election. Hence, even as the Prime Minister he is not the Head of the House and he cannot vote in the Lok Sabha. He can only vote in the Rajya Sabha to which he belongs. Thus, the guilt of alleged corruption taints both of them, though, formally, since Dr Singh is constitutionally the head of the government, his accountability and culpability is the foremost.
The current political drama that is being enacted in the both Houses of the Parliament is quite familiar. The Opposition, led by the BJP, is insisting that the latest scandal-called the Coalgate after the late US President Nixon's Watergate scandal of 1960s-is the responsibility of the Prime Minister since he was holding the charge of that ministry in that period when this scandalous, arbitrary allocation of 142 coal mining blocks took place under his signature. It has been claimed by the Constitutional body-the Comptroller and Auditor General of India(CAG) that is responsible for scanning the finances of the central govt and report to the Parliament annually, that arbitrary distribution of the valuable blocks of national resources like coal(black gold) by the Screening Committee of the govt.at dirt cheap rates and not auctioning them, has resulted in the loss of 1.86 lack crores to the public exchequer. The opposition has demanded the guitly Minister who happens to be the PM at present, to resign, taking moral responsibility of the huge national loss. They are asserting that until he resigns they will not allow the Parliament to function.
Their contention is that during the earlier scam-known as 2G telecom spectrum allocation-the UPA govt all along rejected demands of action against the Minister concerned-A.Raja. Only after a prolonged stalemate and the judicial intervention the Minister was removed and later arrested. The opposition wants a similar action against the wrongdoing of Dr Singh. It is clear that a parliamentary debate will only absolve the guilty Minister of any adverse action and the scam would be buried.
