For four years since the Modi Government took charge, the Congress struggled to find issues to drag the Bharatiya Janata Party regime down to the level the former established in the last five years of its own tenure. But try as it might, it simply could not identify issues where it found instances of corruption at high levels of the Government. But now it believes it has discovered two: The Vijay Mallya episode and the Rafale deal. “Discovered’ may not be the appropriate term, though, because how does one ‘discover’ something that does not exist? It would be more accurate to say that the Congress, led by a super-charged Rahul Gandhi, had begun to imagine graft, internalising it as the gospel truth, and then spreading the canard consistently enough to ensure that it is taken without a question.
But there is a problem. In both these cases, the Congress itself is not clean, and its campaign against the Modi regime has, therefore, suffered from the boomerang effect. A vast chunk of the bad loans extended to Mallya by various public sector banks was given during the Congress-led UPA regime of Manmohan Singh. There is material out in the media that senior Congress leaders had intervened to facilitate those loans. Then Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, whom the Congress had praised to the skies when he had expressed disapproval of the manner demonetisation was implemented, has squarely laid the blame for the creation of non-performing assets (including the loans given to Mallya) at the UPA regime’s door-steps. Worse, the media has also reported on ‘sweet deals’ the Congress struck with Mallya and his now notorious Kingfisher Airlines. Rahul Gandhi fell for Mallya’s desperate lie that he had had a meeting with Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley, and offered to find a way out, telling him that he would be going to the UK. When Mallya retracted his statement after Jaitley hit back, and claimed that he had merely bumped into Jaitley in the corridors of Parliament, the Congress was left holding the wrong end of the stick.
The Rafale issue is equally pathetic for the Congress. As an inter-governmental deal, there cannot have been any corruption in the purchase of the aircraft across the counter. Rahul Gandhi has claimed that the Modi Government has made those purchases at costs exorbitantly higher than what the UPA had negotiated. But he also says in the same breath that the actual costing has been kept under wraps — a matter which the BJP-led NDA readily accepts, citing a secrecy clause. Thus, when nobody officially knows the actual costs, how is the Congress so confident of its allegation that there has been an over-payment? The Congress president resorted to lies even here, claiming that, in a meeting he had with the French President, the latter told him things that stank. The French responded quickly with a denial.
Despite these setbacks, the Congress, it allies and its apologists — which include disgruntled elements who were left out of the Modi dispensation four years ago — continue to rave and rant over ‘corruption’ in the purchase of the fighter aircraft and the Mallya affair. On the latter, they have just one point of substance: Mallya fled the country during the Modi regime. But that is simply not enough to draw attention away from the Congress’s alleged complicity in patronising the businessman. Waters are getting muddied with each passing day. Now, the Shia Waqf Board chief has said that senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad had intervened in a case of reclaiming the Board’s land in Meerut, where Mallya operated a liquor distillery. Azad has rubbished the charge, calling it a “figment of imagination”. So could be the allegations the Congress has been levelling.
The fact is that, as the Modi Government nears completion of its five-year term, there is little real ammunition its opponents have to nail it on corruption, at least. Having earlier raised matters of unemployment, ‘atrocities’ against Scheduled Castes, growing ‘intolerance’ — and more — the Congress and its allies have realised that, all of that alone may not suffice to unseat the BJP from power, come 2019. It is important for them to tarnish the Government’s image more decisively. Time is running out for them, and if they have to indulge in falsehoods and some sleight of hand in the process, then so be it.
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