When one looks at the terrible saga of scandals that have pock-marked the Congress-led UPA govt., the pathetic roles of the Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi, her nominated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and her spokesmen like Kapil Sibal, stand out. The pre-eminent characteristic of the two top leaders is their long, unbroken silence and inexplicable reluctance to communicate with the Indian people who are desperately and angrily seeking answers to their questions and doubts in regard to their rulers' incompetence and cynical indifference to corruption. The arrogant and sanctimonious behaviour of the team of party lawyer spokesmen headed by Sibal, is hard to believe. They have done immense damage to the Congress image that was already badly dented.
In their earlier phase when likes of Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Abhishek Manu Singhvi were trying to malign and destroy Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement, the popular outrage against them was so great that the party leadership discreetly chose to keep them out of the press briefing circuit. Habits die hard. In the wake of the Supreme Court's February 2 verdict cancelling 122 2G licenses illegally allotted by the then Telecom Minister A.Raja, Kapil Sibal was arrogance and cyncism personified. When most observers and media commentators called the apex court judgement "a historic indictment" of the Manmohan Singh govt., Sibal was insisting that the PM had been "vindicated"! Curiously, Sibal did not seem to realise that he was, in fact, implicitly indicting Manmohan Singh and the then Finance Minister P.Chidambaram by claiming that A.Raja was not listening to their advice in favour of the auction of the spectrum. If that was the case, were both of them-Singh and Chidambaram, not guilty of the abdication of their responsibility to stop their junior colleague from going ahead with a clearly "fraudulent" and "illegal" decision to give the 2G spectrum to "friendly" companies at the 2001 price at a huge loss to the public exchequer? Does this not amount to connivance-a silent acceptance of a criminal act?
In their earlier phase when likes of Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Abhishek Manu Singhvi were trying to malign and destroy Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement, the popular outrage against them was so great that the party leadership discreetly chose to keep them out of the press briefing circuit. Habits die hard. In the wake of the Supreme Court's February 2 verdict cancelling 122 2G licenses illegally allotted by the then Telecom Minister A.Raja, Kapil Sibal was arrogance and cyncism personified. When most observers and media commentators called the apex court judgement "a historic indictment" of the Manmohan Singh govt., Sibal was insisting that the PM had been "vindicated"! Curiously, Sibal did not seem to realise that he was, in fact, implicitly indicting Manmohan Singh and the then Finance Minister P.Chidambaram by claiming that A.Raja was not listening to their advice in favour of the auction of the spectrum. If that was the case, were both of them-Singh and Chidambaram, not guilty of the abdication of their responsibility to stop their junior colleague from going ahead with a clearly "fraudulent" and "illegal" decision to give the 2G spectrum to "friendly" companies at the 2001 price at a huge loss to the public exchequer? Does this not amount to connivance-a silent acceptance of a criminal act?
No comments:
Post a Comment