People's Democracy

EDITORIAL

Tehelka Case: A Welcome Step

FINALLY, after three and a half years, the prime accused in the tehelka case have to face the charges. The CBI has registered cases against the former BJP president, Bangaru Laxman and former Janata Dal (United) president, Jaya Jaitly.  Both were shown accepting wads of currency in return for favours on Television screens across the country, three and a half years ago.

Instead of taking action against such brazen corruption, the BJP-led NDA government had instituted an enquiry commission to  probe the motives of the tehelka portal which conducted the sting operation to expose corruption at high places.  This was nothing but a blatant attempt to shield the guilty. This was also a classic case of shooting the messenger instead of reading the message!

This appeared all the more incongruous in the  face of the fact that the defence establishment had moved  on the basis of the tehelka expose and suspended some of the officials who were also exposed in the sting operation.  The then defence minister, George Fernandes, was forced to resign only to be shamelessly reinducted by Vajpayee.  The bombastic thundering of Fernandes that he would return to office only after being proved innocent was discarded with the usual contempt that the Vajpayee government had shown towards political morality.

Finally, the UPA government has rightly proceeded with the matter with the CBI filing five cases related to these exposures.  These cases have been filed before a special CBI court under various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120-B of the IPC for criminal conspiracy.

The BJP and the Janata Dal (United) are now crying foul. Jaya Jaitly has written to the CBI director, “I am writing as the victim (sick) …..”  A person who was seen on television screens instructing a party colleague to accept Rs 2 lakhs in return for “processing” a defence deal has the  temerity to describe herself as the “victim”! Bangaru Laxman was seen accepting Rs 1 lakh and demanding the later installments in US dollars!  Yet, such people today claim the status of “victims”!

It is absolutely essential that the guilty must be brought to book in order to restore some semblance of credibility in our  political system. It is hoped that unlike other corruption cases, the legal wrangling in this case should  neither be allowed to proceed endlessly nor should the guilty be allowed to escape.  This is absolutely necessary to restore the people’s confidence in our political system and to  re-establish elementary norms of political morality.