It’s partisan politics again

It wasn’t so long ago that the Congress leadership was all for the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) looking into the 2G spectrum issue. “The PAC is a joint parliamentary committee presided over by a senior member of the Opposition. I am willing to appear before it.” These were the words of no less

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a personage than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee offering a multi-disciplinary investigative agency to assist the PAC headed by Opposition leader Murli Manohar Joshi. But the vehemence with which the UPA members of the PAC have rejected the report is puzzling and worrying. Allegations that the report was outsourced and that the PAC had no right to criticise the PM go against the very grain of Mr Singh’s desire to resolve this issue. The issue has moved from 2G to whether or not the report stands on the technicality of Mr Joshi having walked and a substitute allowing the report to be rejected by 11 of the 21 members. Significantly, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, arch rivals in UP, seem to have found common cause in scuttling the report along with the UPA. This is a most unfortunate development at a time when the corruption issue is exercising the country as never before. It would seem from this spectacle that our political establishment is unable to get away from narrow partisan concerns. It now appears that Mr Joshi will present the draft report to the Speaker who will take the final call. If the members who have rejected the report feel that their views weren’t accommodated in it, they could surely have put this forward in a democratic manner. The atmosphere in the country today on the issue of corruption is such that this move will raise further doubts instead of making things more transparent. Allegations that the draft report was leaked may be valid but that alone is not reason enough to reject it in its entirety.
So after a short period in which both the Opposition and the ruling coalition seemed to be on the same side on the corruption issue, battle-lines have been drawn once again. This will only serve to further devalue our democratic institutions and lower the image of our elected representatives in the eyes of the people. If this is the fate of the draft PAC report, people will lose faith that the Joint Parliamentary Committee report will fare any better. The UPA government had just begun to recover lost ground with its decisive action against some of those under suspicion in the 2G scam, albeit a little too late. This signal that it means business on the issue of corruption will be meaningless in the face of these obstructionist tactics on a report from a committee that it endorsed earlier. So, in many ways we are back to the drawing board once again.

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The Times of India

NEW DELHI: A day after his arrest on corruption charges, Suresh Kalmadi's 15-year tenure as the IOA president came to an abrupt end after he was sacked from the post and veteran sports administrator VK Malhotra was 'unanimously' named as the acting president.

The swift action to end Kalmadi's reign as the supremo was taken by the IOA officials in a meeting chaired by Malhotra himself, citing clause 13B of the constitution which empowers the vice-president to take interim charge in the absence of the president.

Malhotra said he will call a meeting of the IOA executive board at the earliest in consultation with the secretary general Randhir Singh, who is out of town, and discuss the situation arising out of the arrest of Kalmadi.

"IOA constitution is very clear, there cannot be vacuum and work of the IOA will have to continue. So I have accepted to work as the acting president of the IOA," Malhotra told reporters after the meeting.

"I will call a meeting of the executive committee as soon as possible which is prescribed under the constitution. Secretary general (Randhir Singh) is returning to Delhi and after consulting him I will call a meeting of the Executive Board. We will discuss all the issues at length in the Board meeting," he said.

Kalmadi, former Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chairman, was on Monday arrested by CBI for allegedly awarding a contract for the mega event to a Swiss company at an inflated rate of Rs 141 crore in a "pre-meditated" manner.

But, the haste shown in removing Kalmadi came as a surprise to many of the IOA office bearers, particularly when its secretary general Randhir Singh was out of station.

It was not clear whether the meeting, where 15 members are said to have attended, has legal validity. The IOA officials, however, maintained that senior members were consulted over telephone before taking the decision to appoint Malhotra as acting president.

Vice-president Tarlochan Singh, who was also present at the meeting, said that many of the members could not be present at the conclave because of the short notice but they have consulted them on phone.

Kha te hai jaisa enasan kar tha hai use usaki ki saja Vaisi hi malti hai sach hi kha hai boya paid babul ka to aam kha se aay
yesa hi hamari Rajniti me ho rha hai 25 april ko kalmadi (Suresh Kalmadi was on Monday arrested by CBI on charges of cheating and corruption for his alleged role in irregularities in CWG projects.)arrest ho hi gaye aba dekho kis kis ki bari aati hai.