Pm modi, enforce Zero fault governance

The week just past has not been smooth sailing for the BJP. A London-based newspaper exposed the links of key individuals long associated with the party in matters pertaining to Lalit Modi, who for the past five years has declined to return to India to answer to charges of a financial nature. The most consequential of these is Sushma Swaraj, the Minister for External Affairs. The BJP has said that the minister was not guilty of any illegality — not even improprieties — when she indicated to the UK authorities that Government of India would in effect welcome the giving of documents to Lalit Modi that would free him to travel across the globe. While the jury may still be out (at least to GOI) on the matter of legality and propriety, it is apparent that such a move was illjudged and indicated a less than adequate knowledge of available methods available to permit Lalit Modi to travel to Lisbon so as to be at the hospital bedside of his ailing wife. Rather than the British government, Swaraj ought to have turned to her own department, so that Mr Modi would have had no option but to return to India to face questioning. The decision to turn to a foreign government rather than to her own is an ill-considered example of decision-making, which at the least, casts doubts on her competence, despite the glowing testimonials showered by a section of the media, which seems oblivious to the fact that the actual architect of the foreign policy success story since 26 May 2014 has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Even more than an External Affairs Minister, who prefers to place a sensitive matter involving issues of probity and even security in the hands of a foreign government rather than her own, the case of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is ever less defensible. Of course, this has not stopped the BJP from attempting to whitewash Ms Raje’s actions. The manner in which the BJP and even a few senior individuals within the RSS defended the indefensible in the case of Swaraj and Raje, has tarnished the image of the government in a manner reminiscent of what became routine during the later years of the UPA. That alliance took nearly three years before the first smudges in its image became too big to evade, but in the case of the NDA, that unhappy situation has arrived just a year after taking office in a swirl of promises about transparency and probity. Over the past year, even a hundred million of the over a trillion dollars of money stashed in tax havens by Indian nationals has yet to return. The aptly-named SIT seems to be doing little other than design one onerous restriction after the other, none of which is likely to have any practical effect other than providing yet more avenues for corrupt officials to extort yet more bribes, including by initiating charges against high net worth individuals and then dropping them after suitcases change hands.

For the BJP this is a test of will and intent, and we look to PM Modi to ensure that his party bite the bullet of accountability in the case of Swaraj and Raje. The 2014 elections were about a Zero Fault government, and voters expect nothing less from PM Modi.