It will be tough separating black money from politics
Earth will shake only if politicians resolve to shun illicit funds in elections.
* “Two years ago I sent her an attaché full of Rupees three lakh fifty thousand in cash. What to talk of accounts, she has not even bothered to return the attaché case.” That was S.K. Patil, the longest serving treasurer of the Congress, at the time of the 1969 split in the party. The “she” he was referring to was none other than Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. * In the early 1950s, having failed to deliver on his promise to hang every black marketer from the nearest lamppost, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru now talked of banishing black money from politics until a Kanpur moneybag brought him down to terra firma: “Jawaharlal, tum kaya sochtey ho key Vijayalakshmi Pandit (Nehru’s sister, in case you did not know) hawai jahaj mein apne paise per udti hain? Uski Bombay ki ticket maine abhi karbai.
(Jawaharlal, do you believe that Vijayalakshmi buys air tickets with her own money? I got her Bombay ticket done just now and gave her Rs 25,000 for expenses.)” Panditji’s ardour to fight black money was suitably diminished. * Years earlier, Mahatma Gandhi was so disgusted with the corruption of Congress ministers in the provincial governments formed after the 1937 election that he threatened to quit the Congress. He was persuaded not to do so on the ground that his quitting would undermine the freedom movement. What are we driving at? Simple. Politics and black money are inseparable twins. Though ordinary people contributed voluntarily to the freedom movement, yet it was the moneybags who actually bankrolled the Congress. One reason why they did not donate through cheques was the fear of the colonial masters.
Why, the seven- star life of luxury that the NehruGandhis have lived all along without there being any ostensible means of legitimate income can only be explained by the generosity of anonymous donors. Extended foreign education, even if it did not result in actual degrees or even real education, could not have come cheap. Or the frequent foreign sojourns for various members of the family.
Therefore, Rahul Gandhi’s belated attempt to throw the 2013 diary at Narendra Modi is unlikely to find its target. Even if you were to lend credence to those entries, there is not a soul in the BJP or outside which really believes that the Prime Minister diverted a paisa from those funds into his own pocket. (Meanwhile, Rahul should be concerned if a number of leaders who figure in those diaries did not deposit the money in the party account, which, one has it on good authority, they did not.) Meanwhile, one of the diaries was a complete sham, prepared with an eye on the impending income tax raids.
Notably, the fact that of nearly Rs 3,500 crore that the Congress officially collected in the decade it was in power between 2004-14, over 80% was from unknown sources as per the return filed by it with the Income-Tax Department. Likewise, the BJP too filed a return of a little under Rs 3,000 crore for the same decade and nearly 80% of the amount was from unnamed donors.
Nobody, just nobody, who is in the electoral game can do without black money. Remember how some in the AAP allegedly used hawala channels to convert black money into white in order to brag that it only deals in licit cash. Also, the fact that the AAP website listing the donors has been “under construction” for several months only underlines the cold fact that regardless of the pretensions of Kejriwal the AAP may be no different from any other party.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission’s grievance is that there are more than 2,000 parties registered with it merits attention. Maybe the registration process needs to be more stringent, though care needs to be taken not to deny publicspirited citizens a chance to offer a better alternative to the voters.
However, the current focus on these postbox entities would have better served the public purpose if the state of their finances was disclosed. Given that a number of such fly-by-night parties are registered only to launder money, the relevant authorities ought to have disclosed the total donations held and/or disbursed by them. The Kolkata hawala dealer, Paras Mal Lodha, arrested under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act, missed an opportunity to stay out of trouble when he was first raided by the Enforcement Directorate in early September. They found keys of a couple of lockers which threw up jewellery, gems and other precious trinkets worth over Rs 250 crore. But the raid did not deter Lodha from being Lodha. Besides, demonetisation offered once-in-a-life opportunity to make a killing.
He had first shot into prominence when using the services of a journalist he virtually became the financier of a key minister in the shortlived V.P. Singh government. Sometime later, Lodha made a well-publicised but eventually failed bid to take over the country’s best known chit fund headquartered in Kolkata.
Soon he ventured into “fixing” judges. Having bought rights to a well-located multistoried building in Mumbai, Lodha relied on the services of a senior High Court judge to sanction the extra FSI. The said judge was paid in excess of over Rs 40 lakh, ostensibly as royalty for two long pamphlet-like tracts Lodha had got printed to justify the payments. Money was remitted to the judge’s bank account in foreign currency. Thanks to the leakage of the Lodha nexus, the said, and we might add, honourable judge had to quit.
Sometime later another scandal came to light when bundles of currency notes were found in the toilet of the Bombay High Court. The hand of Lodha was widely suspected. He is widely known to lend his services to fix legal issues at a hefty price.
For several years now, Lodha had been the key receiver-cum-launderer of bribes for powerful people in a southern government. Cash would be delivered to him in Kolkata, which he would convert into white at a hefty commission and then remit it back to designated parties in the state on receipt of coded messages from a key aide of the CM. In the process, a number of bureaucrats too came to rely on Lodha’s services.
However, the well-organised racket which Lodha had carried on for decades was exposed when in a moment of hubris the little known Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon bought the Ruias’ Jor Bagh bungalow for over Rs 100 crore. The purchase made him a target, with lawyers far more successful than him asking “Rohit who?”, while taxmen sought to figure out the source of his funds.
Meanwhile, the arrest of Lodha last Tuesday night while he was ready to board the Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur after clearing immigration and other formalities would suggest that he is set to spend a long time in jail. At long last, Lodha is facing justice in the Modi Age. The results of the Chandigarh municipal elections were described by the Bharatiya Janata Party Lok Sabha MP Kirron Kher as an endorsement of the Central government’s demonetisation decision. Nothing could be further from the truth. The BJP won the polls simply because the Congress was a divided house and its campaign was managed by people who are considered tainted by the electorate. The outcome is certainly not a precursor to the Punjab Assembly polls, where the grand old party spearheaded by Captain Amarinder Singh has a fighting chance to bounce back and recapture power, though the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) continues to offer a formidable challenge to the two principal contenders—the Congress and the Akalis.
It is also politically incorrect to interpret the Punjab scenario from the prism of the Chandigarh civic body elections. The BJP is the major partner in Chandigarh, whereas the Akalis play second fiddle, while it is the other way around so far as Punjab is concerned. It is purely another matter that both in 2007 and 2012, the Akalis formed the government primarily because the BJP fared well in the 23 Hindu dominated seats and therefore helping it to reach the majority figure. The BJP has not gained in strength and its dominance in those 23 seats has gradually diminished making the alliance rather vulnerable.
Secondly, the effort by the Congress in Chandigarh was marshalled by Pawan Bansal, who as Railways Minister was in the eye of a political storm and consequently had to quit in a huff. The 2014 elections had demonstrated that Bansal is certainly not amongst the most popular persons in the city and entrusting him with the polls was evidently a mistake of mammoth proportion. Thirdly, it has been observed that the BJP is able to fare better than the Congress wherever the two parties are pitted against each other. The byelections in various states are a testimony to this fact. However, in places where the saffron brigade has to face a regional outfit, it finds it extremely difficult to hold its ground. In a way, Chandigarh was an easy sweep and it would be absolutely naive to see it as an endorsement for the demonetisation drive, given that the common people face an equal amount of inconvenience as people elsewhere due to the overall poor implementation of the decision.
The Gandhis, who head the Congress, too have developed several blind spots and acknowledging their rejection by the people in contests against the BJP is one of them. Unless a mirror is held before them, it is unlikely that they would ever realise that at present they are a major liability for their own party and any amount of sycophancy by rootless leaders who surround them cannot change the situation. In this context, it is in their own interest that regional leaders are allowed to have a free hand so that the party is able to overcome its worst phase in history.
In Punjab, for instance, the Gandhis continue to operate as if they were still in power. For over a month, the entire top leadership of the state has been virtually camping in the national capital, waiting for the high command to clear the tickets of aspirants. There is no dearth of Punjab number plate cars that can be spotted in hotels and areas around 24, Akbar Road, the party’s headquarters. It may be providing a high to leaders entrusted with Punjab poll-work, but it poorly reflects on the high command which needs to understand that long term absence of top functionaries from the state battlefield has created a vacuum, which is assisting the Akalis to revive their chances and the AAP to bolster its prospects.
The Congress had lost the last two times essentially because several leaders based in Delhi had prevailed on the leadership to give tickets to their nominees, even if they had no hope whatsoever to win from anywhere. There were 39 such tickets that were distributed and barring one or two, all went down the drain, presenting the state government on a platter to the Akali-BJP combine. The same could happen again if the high command refuses to see the actuality and agrees to oblige its close associates, rather than looking at the electoral arena from the winnability angle.
If there is any hope for the Congress, it is only in Punjab and this is primarily because of Captain Amarinder Singh. The contest is not between the Congress and others, but between Amarinder Singh and the rest. It is, therefore, in the overall interest of the high command that it should allow the political discourse to be on these lines. The former Maharaja of Patiala is the only one who can pull it off for the party and as a consequence there is little point in denying him a free hand. However, care has to be taken that the Hindu seats are not given to Jat Sikhs, as they were in the past, and if the party is able to do so it certainly would be placed better to take on its adversaries.
The Akalis cannot be written off either, as in Sukhbir Badal they have a relentless campaigner. The AAP is eyeing the state as its best battlefield after Delhi. Nevertheless, it is solely Captain Amarinder Singh who can trounce impediments and bring jubilation for his party. Between us.