A latest stock taking report by India’s federal audit bureau blames the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal on prime minister Manmohan Singh’s office and the Delhi government. I preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games – hosted in New Delhi in October – the government had spent crore of rupees in sprucing up the capital and building and upgrading various sports venues. While huge discrepancies were unearthed immediate after the games were over, now the audit bureau report had squared in on two most significant political figures of the country as well as of the Congress party, the majority stakeholder of the ruling coalition.
The report blames the Prime Minister’s Office for giving a free hand to the chairman of the organizing committee and the main accused in the scandal. The Delhi government, the report says appointed consultants arbitrarily.
This, the report says “resulted in (the) adoption of richer specifications in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner in different packages. We found the average awarded works for street-scaping and beautification works of Rs 4.8 crore/km to be exorbitant, with total estimated wasteful expenditure of more than Rs 100 crore.”
And this is not the first time that the Delhi government had been blamed for the CWG scandal. In March, the Shunglu committee appointed by the prime minister had also pointed out that the Delhi government had wasted the first three years thereby reducing the time available to prepare for the games so that most decisions became emergency decisions “compromising cost and quality.”
And despite the opposition braying for Dikshit’s blood (read: resignation) the Congress is backing her firmly!
Such confidence doesn’t just arise from the fact that Dikshit was the first chief minister of Delhi who was elected for a second term or that thanks to her Delhi has become and remained a stronghold of the party since 1998. It also doesn’t so much matter that she is a seasoned politician and able administrator – many strong political leaders and administrators have fallen from grace – that is stopping the congress or the PM to wash their hands off her as they had done with tainted members of the party. While these are all strong points in her favor, the bottom line is that her association with the Gandhi’s go back a long way.
She became close to former prime minister the late Indira Gandhi through her father-in-law Umashanker Dikshit, a veteran freedom fighter and Indira Gandhi’s close aide. Gandhi was so impressed by the the administrative efficiency of the young Dikshit that she nominated her to the Indian delegation of the UN Commission on status of women. Soon after the senior Gandhi’s assassination in mid 1980s she was asked by Indira Gandhi’s son, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to join politics. Continuing the tradition, today she enjoys Sonia Gandhi’s strong support in the party.
And while that might be true, it is also truw that the timing of the report couldn’t have been more wrong for her. With her biggest support, Sonia Gandhi out of the country – recuperating from surgery – she is vulnerable to attcks from within the party as well. After all Sonia Gandhi’s chief political adviser is her biggest detractor. And while the congress along with the PM is cautiously stepping around the issue, Dikshit’s biggest line of defense is that the report did not name her directly. For obvious reason she wants to distance herself from decisions that might have been taken up by other departments and their chiefs.
Even if under public pressure prime minister Singh initiates a CBI inquiry into the CAG report, it is unlikely that there will be a case against Dikshit. However, as head of the state government that has allegedly pilfered crores of money from the public exchequer she cannot hope to wave away the demands for her resignation with her characteristic nonchalance for too long without showing any evidence of things being otherwise.
Singh used the Independence Day podium on Monday to spell out his commitment to end corruption. He had admitted “corruption is a big obstacle in national transformation.”
All he needs to do now is cut the rhetoric and do something about it!
