Sushma Swaraj mars PM Narendra Modi’s clean record

Sushma Swaraj mars PM Narendra Modi’s clean record

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 01:00 AM IST
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Should Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj resign following embarrassing disclosures about her links to the fugitive Lalit Modi? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, because what she did was highly improper. Here was a man wanted in India for answering grave charges of financial wheeling-dealing, and, here we had the country’s Foreign Minister, no less, helping him to get travel papers so that he could roam about freely all over Europe and Latin America. This was wrong. The fact that she did it solo without taking anyone in confidence further underlined her anxiety to hide her close links with Modi. She believed she could do a favour to a dubious friend, even though such help was in complete violation of the conduct expected of a minister. After the lid was blown off the grave misdemeanour, she has offered a weak defence that she did it so that Modi could be at the side of his wife in Portugal when the latter underwent a surgical procedure. But why did the Foreign Minister personally entertain such requests, why wasn’t Modi asked to go through the laid-down process in this regard? No cogent answer has been offered on her behalf. Quite clearly, her husband and daughter were beneficiaries of the largesse from Modi and she felt obliged to misuse her official position to bail him out.  In any responsive democratic system the errant minister would have resigned by now. But are we a responsible democracy? We are not.

Look at the way the Opposition has latched on the Foreign Minister’s misconduct to rope in the Prime Minister and others in the ruling party in the controversy. The desperation of the Congress to hit out at Prime Minister is clear when it seeks to suggest that without getting the approval of the PM Swaraj would not have helped the former IPL boss. Of course, this is utter nonsense, but even in the absence of a shred of evidence it would not prevent the Congress leaders from mechanically abusing PM Modi. The fact that Swaraj did not consult even the Foreign Secretary before interceding on behalf of Modi with the British authorities clearly suggests that she kept it hush-hush, that she was aware that what she was doing was wrong but nonetheless felt obliged to do it because Modi was a generous patron of her family. She allowed her private pecuniary interests to overrule the demands of her official position. Now, whether those pecuniary benefits were in the form of handsome legal fees or in some other form is hard to tell, but given that neither her husband nor daughter is a top-shot lawyer would suggest that Modi had engaged them for extraneous reasons. And the huge payback came when Swaraj as Foreign Minister did the unthinkable by short-circuiting the entire system, even ignoring the blue corner notice, and arranged the travel papers for a man wanted on grave charges of criminal fraud. As we said, in a truly responsive democracy she would have resigned by now. But because the Congress Party is exploiting the controversy to hit out at the PM, Swaraj still feels that she could end up saving her job. Also, there is a feeling that in case she resigns the Opposition will taste blood and bay for a bigger price from the ruling party might have made the NDA close ranks behind the beleaguered Foreign Minister.

Meanwhile, the apprehension that the coming monsoon session of Parliament next month will be jeopardized due to the Opposition shindy over the Lalit Modi-Sushma Swaraj nexus is not misplaced. But because the Opposition itself is divided, with the Samajwadi Party and the Trinamool Congress suggesting restraint in the matter, there is hope that the ruling party might be able to salvage it from the sheer recalcitrance of the Congress party and its new-found friends in Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and Laloo Yadav’s RJD. All in all, Sushma Swaraj has not only damaged herself but has blotted the copybook of the Modi Government which was rightly proud of its scam-free one year till now. Even now it might not be too late for her to atone for her grave error and quit on her own volition. That would be a favour to her party and the Modi Government. And it would silence the Congress hypocrites who having perpetrated some of the biggest scandals of free India now seek to quote the scriptures about good governance.

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