Time to take a stand

Documents show that the coal blocks allocations made by the UPA govt between 2005 and 2009 were completely arbitary.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s penchant for ‘Maun Vrath’ is well known. When the bush fire is being lit all around him, he can still remain calm and composed, as long as his little corner is not touched. He does not believe in reacting to the fire when it does not concern him.

But when he was in Myanmar, creating another piece of history as the first Indian prime minister in 25 years to visit that country to improve relations, Team Anna exploded a bomb: They accused Manmohan Singh and 14 other ministers in his cabinet of being corrupt and demanded the constitution of a Special Investigation Team to conduct a probe. The Anna movement demanding the institution of Lokpal may be in disarray due to a variety of reasons, but the individual members of Team Anna are still the most effective opposition, time and again exposing the skeletons in the UPA government’s cupboard.

The UPA’s ‘Colagate’ which is being audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, has been making news for the past two months as a mega scam, perhaps as big as the 2G scandal. The CAG’s  conclusions are not yet known, but putting together the available documents, Team Anna has directly accused the prime minister of “abusing his position to give huge pecuniary benefits to private parties.”

Whether it was A Raja, P Chidambaram, Suresh Kalmadi, Sharad Pawar, Vilasrao Deshmukh etc, as long as the allegations were being made against his colleagues and not him, the prime minister rarely, that too only when compelled, gave his reaction, as if they did not concern him. But when, for the first time, his name was dragged into the murky deals regarding allocation of coal blocks, Manmohan Singh reacted quickly and angrily on his return flight from Myanmar, calling them “irresponsible allegations made without confirming facts.”

 A visibly upset prime minister said, “I will give up my public life if there is an iota of truth in the allegations levelled against me and the country can give me any punishment.” Drawing attention to his ‘Mr Clean” image, he said his long public career was an “open book” and he had nothing to hide.

The prime minister’s anguish is understandable as he has reasons to be deeply hurt at his integrity and a clean public record being questioned in the evening of his life. Despite several scandals directly implicating many of his cabinet ministers, a majority of the people of India still think that Manmohan Singh alone shines as clean as a lily, may be surrounded by a dirty pond.

But a close reading of the 79-page case sheet with annexures prepared by Team Anna makes it clear that the coal blocks allocations made by the UPA government between 2005 and 2009 were completely fraudulent and non-transparent, allowing many private firms to make windfall gains at enormous cost to the exchequer. The point to be noted is that while the coal ministry officials consistently advocated auctioning of coal blocks and competitive bidding route since July 2004, the prime minister’s office repeatedly ignored the advice and went ahead with ad hoc allotments.

Auction route

As against only 39 blocks allocated to government and private parties in previous decades till 2004, the UPA government made as many as 179 allocations between 2005 and 2009 “without transparency, without any competitive process and without protecting the interest of the public exchequer.” A new bill adopting the auction route was adopted only in August 2010 and since then, only one block has been alloted.

Team Anna alleges that since prime minister Manmohan Singh was “directly in charge” of the coal ministry between November 2006 and May 2009, he cannot escape responsibility for the scandal. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the CAG has pegged the loss at over Rs 1 lakh crore to the exchequer and it will be interesting to see as to who it will hold responsible. Maybe, the PMO acted without his full knowledge, but Manmohan Singh will do well to clear his name.

Team Anna’s case sheet is equally scathing on senior ministers like Pranab Mukherjee, Chidambaram Sharad Pawar, S M Krishna, Kamal Nath, Praful Patel and Vilasrao Deshmukh. While Chidambaram’s role in 2G scam is a matter before the Supreme Court, Pranab’s role as defence minister in the Navy War Room Leak and the Scorpene submarine deal are being investigated by the CBI, though, unsurprisingly the investigation is progressing at a snail’s pace.

Sharad Pawar has courted controversy one after the other as his name figures in the wheat scam, the oil seeds scam and the Lavasa land scam. The last named, which has got into trouble with the Union environment ministry, also involves his daughter-MP Supriya Sule and son-in-law Sadanand Sule, who were directors of the company. Praful Patel as civil aviation minister is accused of going in for reckless acquisition of 111 aircraft for Air India, raising loans worth Rs 67,000 crore from the US and Indian banks, while at the same time, gifting away major profit-making routes to private airlines. He is held largely responsible for the mess that Air India finds itself in.

The media has surprisingly not shed much light on the rice export scam, in which Kamal Nath, as the then commerce minister was allegedly involved. The documents gathered by Team Anna show that the Government of India imposed a sudden ban on the export of rice in October 2007. As India is one of the major exporters, the international prices of rice shot up from $350 per ton to $1,000 per ton. When some African countries approached Indian government for help, Kamal Nath, instead of using government agencies, allowed some private companies to circumvent the ban, sell rice almost at international prices and make a profit of around Rs 2,500 crore!

The prime minister has a reputation built over a long career to keep. He will be judged by history depending on how he responds to the great challenge before him.