BJP’s handling of corruption charges sets Congress thinking

Congress should have acted strong and defended its Ministers, says Manish Tiwari.

With the ruling-BJP displaying great commitment toward backing its key Ministers Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chouhan while they are entangled in various kinds of corruption allegations, senior Congress leaders are digging old graves, introspecting whether letting its Ministers — A. Raja, Dayanidhi Maran, Shashi Tharoor and Virbadhra Singh — resign between 2010 and 2013 was a fair strategy to manage the public perception.

Speaking to The Hindu, senior Congress leader Manish Tiwari regretted the party decision of letting Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbadhra Singh step down in 2012 after he came under attack from the Opposition. He said asking its Ministers resign on the grounds of corruption allegations became an easy option than guarding them from criticism manufactured by the Opposition parties, particularly the BJP. For Tiwari, it was like “UPA II itself turning its jurisprudence on head by asking its own people to step down.”

Unlike the Congress, which let its Ministers resign on moral grounds, the BJP deflected the media focus from scams like LalitGate and Vyapam and fended off criticism over heart-wrenching incidents like Dadri lynching.

For Mr. Tiwari, who was one of the main spokespersons in UPA II, the Congress should have acted strong and defended its Ministers, rather than pushing them to resign on “moral” grounds when corruption charges against them weren’t proved in court.

A senior Congress leader told The Hindu that the Congress leadership now feels guilty of encouraging the opposition parties “to define its moral boundaries.”

A delegation of senior Congress leaders recently met party president Sonia Gandhi to discuss a strategy to guard Virbadhra Singh and “toughen up the party walls” against a “vicious campaign that aims to destroy the Congress leadership.”

“Soniaji is clear on one thing,” he said. “She will defend him (Mr. Singh) throughout the legal course and give him moral and intellectual support until he is proven innocent. But if he is found guilty of any misdeed she will back off and he will be on his own.”

But for Sachin Pilot, the resignations tendered by all the Congress Ministers between 2010 and 2012 perfectly fell in line with the Congress ideology. Mr. Pilot said that Ms. Sonia Gandhi is firm on the policy of resignation over corruption allegations and she wouldn’t like to change it.