In the five days since the monsoon session of Parliament ended without witnessing any business, thanks to the release of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) controversial report on coal blocks allocation, Union Ministers and top Congress functionaries — as part of a concerted strategy — have been visiting State capitals to defend the government, even as party spokespersons simultaneously gone as far as to equate the BJP with the CAG.
Unlike in the case of the 2G spectrum scandal, this time, the Congress and the government were quicker off the mark to try and do some damage control.
The party has not just gained experience — this time, those under fire don’t belong to a friendly party; some of those being mentioned are in the Congress. Worse, at the time when some of the decisions that are being questioned were taken, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself, held the coal portfolio.
There is a strong sense in the party that it has conceded too much on 2G to the Opposition, even accepting the setting up of a joint parliamentary committee to go into the issue. “We are paying now for the loss of political nerve and our penchant for expediency, which was underscored by our abject surrender in 2010, when the CAG report on 2G came out,” a Congress functionary told The Hindu, adding, “We thought we could cut our losses by hanging everything on the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, but we were wrong.”
Indeed, it is at Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s instance that Ministers and party functionaries are travelling around the country to present the government’s case while taking on the Opposition frontally.
Sibal takes on BJP
On Wednesday, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal was in Kolkata, accusing the BJP of trying to subvert the country’s growth story. He said the latter was suffering from ‘paralysis’ as it was not allowing Parliament to function, returning the barb directed at the government by the Opposition.
On Tuesday, even as Minister of State for Commerce Jyotiraditya Scindia addressed a press conference in Patna stressing that the BJP, not the Congress, was sidetracking the issue by refusing to discuss the issue in Parliament, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh were in Lucknow. There, Mr. Singh drew comparisons between the Opposition’s current campaign against the government and that against Rajiv Gandhi on Bofors between 1985-1990. That was also on the basis of a report by the CAG, incidentally a CAG who, Mr. Singh pointed out, went on to become a BJP MP – T.N. Chaturvedi.
On Monday, Mr. Azad accompanied Law Minister Salman Khurshid to Hyderabad where they vigorously defended the Prime Minister, giving a point-by-point rebuttal of the Opposition’s allegations. And on Sunday, Minister of State for Communications and IT Sachin Pilot and party general secretary B.K. Hariprasad were in Chandigarh. Mr. Pilot said the BJP stalled Parliament as it did not want to explain why its own Chief Ministers had written to the Centre strongly opposing any change in the mode of allocating coal blocks.
But even as the damage control blitz continued, a functionary stressed that while the Congress was confident that it would be “able to deal with the BJP” — as that party too had things to hide — Coalgate had just added to the perception of a corrupt government at the Centre, coming as it has done in the wake of a slew of scams.
In the Congress, there are also those who say that the party must go beyond press conferences, as it amounted to fighting the Opposition “on its own turf.” “We need to change the terms of the debate. Take some key decisions, reverse the sense of a crisis of governance, and tackle food inflation,” a party source said. A government source too said that some key economic decisions were being planned to try and take the attention away from Coalgate.
The fact that the government is engaged in fire-fighting, Congress sources added, could also impact the planned changes in the Council of Ministers, possibly later this month. This was meant to be the last major reshuffle before the 2014 general elections, but with party general secretary Rahul Gandhi still reluctant to take on a role in government, the changes could be limited to filling the vacancies and admitting a few ministers from the DMK, government sources said.
Keywords: Coal scam, coal block allocation, CAG report, UPA government, coalgate, Coal India Ltd, PAC on coal, Coal Ministry, PMO in coalgate
The Congess cannot wipe off the corruption stain on it by calling its political opponents names. No other government in New Delhi has spoiled its name so thoroughly and fallen so sharply in public esteem as the present one. Sonia Gandhi's hope of converting this ancient land into a kingdom under the royal rule of the dynasty of which she is the head today with her son as the crown prince may remain just a hope.How about the Congress party then, one may ask. History books of the future may have much to talk about it and it's harakiri!
Why, first of all, this need for such a desperate damage control exercise by the Congress party that heads the government? As the lead party in UPA, it has failed to recognise what Woodrow Wilson said in 1912:
The business of government is to organize the common interest against the special interests.
Mr. Kapil Sibal and his colleagues also appear to have conveniently failed to note that none of their allies seems to have come out till now, strongly supporting the Congress party, the PM and the ministers allegedly involved in the infamous 'Coalgate', to the extent the Congress party tried to defend its most trusted ally in 2G. Is Congress not isolated in its present crisis by its own aliees in the UPA? With their hands thus tied, how are they going to convince the nation that the Government and their party has 'zero' role in the wrongful allotment of coal blocks?
Looking at the scenario on Coalgate at the centre, people have started mistrusting the statements made by different Congress functionaries and believing that nobody would spell the bean. In the CAG report on 2G spectrum scam also the elected representatives of the people were summarily rejecting the findings of the CGA, totally neglecting the fact that CGA is the statutory head, who is to bring out any malfunctions on the part of the executive. A.Raja, the kingpin, is said to be let free on bail so as to keep the DMK in good humour to muster the support of his party. In the present case even the Prime minister, accused the CGA. Just as all the politicians are scared about the contempt of Court Proceedings, had there been any similar law in the case of CGA, most of the functionaries would have been tight-lipped. Sensible elected representatives of the people should shun partisan thinking and try to control damage done to the Nation.
Congress should deploy Mr Digvijay SIngh, Manish Tiwari, Jayanthi Natarajan , Renuka Choudry also in the forefront of the battle to get the lost glory.
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