By Nantoo Banerjee
The post-Anna Hazare government resolve to take the fight against corruption head on is off to a strange start. Efforts are already on to muzzle the judiciary from voicing ‘unwarranted’ remarks against statutory bodies and persons, shield the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from attacks from rights activists and keep sports bodies and federations such as BCCI, IOA, AIFF, CWG, etc. outside the purview of the RTI Act. Senior union ministers, cabinet secretary and top politicians are clearly against unrestricted public snooping around official files and records. The oft-grudged judicial activism is now sought to be controlled by an act of Parliament itself.
The recommendation of the parliamentary standing committee seeking to curtail the free expression of judiciary to make critical comments and observations against other constitutional bodies or statutory authorities (read the government /the union cabinet) not only blunts the judiciary’s most important ammunition – fearless criticism of executive wrong-doings – but also indirectly restricts its power to punish corruption. The law makers on the treasury bench or the government which introduces law bills in parliament to get them passed by virtue of its majority in parliament want to sit in judgement on what is warranted or unwarranted of the judiciary with regard to the nature of its comments on executive actions or decisions under question before a court of law. In other words, judiciary’s key function as a protector of Constitution in the case of fight between the legislature and executive, including statutory authorities exercising executive powers, is being sought to be curbed and redefined.
The first move to foil the attempt of the Supreme Court and Delhi special court trying to establish irregularity, if any, in the 2G spectrum allocation case appears to be evident as the CBI found no evidence that Unitech Wireless, facing a host of charges from cheating to criminal conspiracy and forging from the federal investigating agency, paid bribes to Andimuthu Raja. The CBI also found no evidence of a “quid-pro-quo or money trail” between the Unitech company and Raja. The CBI argument coming at a time when the counsels of Raja and Kanimozhi have been talking about getting the Prime Minister, Home Minister and Telecom Minister to the witness box to prove the innocence of the key accused in the case questions the very substance of the financial conspiracy theory between the politicians and corporate houses. The union law ministry’s latest definition of ‘associate companies’ should bring smiles to jailed Mumbai businessman Asif Balwa of DB Realty as well as former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi’s wife and daughter controlling Kalaignar TV.
Actually, the government-controlled investigative agencies – the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) – are set to repeat what they do the best, make light of high profile corruption cases involving politicians and businessmen after an initial hype and let the accused in the 2G corruption case off the hook. The first set of loopholes in the CBI charge sheet is exposed, brightening the chances of former Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja, sitting MP Kanimozhi and businessman Asif Balwa soon walking out of the Tihar jail. It may be just a matter of time before the other accused in custody, including two former secretaries, steps out of the jail gate as free persons. For the judiciary, it may be another frustrating exercise to punish and prevent corruption in high places. The top brass in the CBI and ED may not mind a ‘routine’ admonition from the court for failing to file a legally convincing charge-sheet.
It may be just a matter of time before Justices G S Singhvi and A S Ganguly, who ordered on December 10, 2010, a thorough investigation into the 2G scam by the CBI and ED, join the ranks of other eminent members of the bench that tried hard and frustratingly failed to pin down the government and high profile politicians in earlier mega corruption cases. The government-controlled federal investigative agencies failed in the past the noble intention of several eminent judges, who include Justices J C Verma, S P Bharucha, S C Sen, Santosh Hegde and S H Kapadia, to establish and punish corruption in public life. In 2000, Justice Santosh Hegde went to the extent of saying that the CBI resorted to “suggestion falsi” and “suppression very” and noted that files were unauthorisedly destroyed by its officers on ulterior motive. It seems even such caustic remarks from a Supreme Court judge had little impact on the CBI’s operational style.
Most high profile corruption cases involving government and powerful politicians failed to end up in prosecution because of the very political interference into the function of the government-controlled investigative agencies. The nature and extent of such interference have been aptly described in a book titled ‘Who owns CBI – The Naked Truth’ penned down by a well-known former CBI joint director B R Lall and published by Manas. Flawed charge-sheets and lack of strong evidence had, in the past, made a mockery of the Bofors kick-back case, Bihar fodder scam case, Jain havala case, Panna-Mukta case, JMM (Shibu Soren) graft case, Babri Masjid case, Purulia Arms Drop (Kim Davy) case, Taj Corridor case, Skipper Construction case and several others. Charge-sheets were filed by the CBI against powerful union cabinet ministers, chief ministers, state governors among others, who were arrested and jailed, but could not be prosecuted for want of strong legally admissible evidence.
The Bofors kick-back case, which failed to nab Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, a key accused, was the limit of failed investigations and colossal wastage of government funds in the process by the federal agencies such as the CBI and ED. The Bofors case, involving an alleged Rs. 64-crore kick-back, was open for almost a quarter of a century. Even the judiciary was fed up after it noted that the government spent a whopping Rs. 250 crore in investigations and legal expenses, a good part of it being in foreign exchange as CBI and ED sleuths travelled through Asia, Western Europe and North and South America to pursue the case. Nearly US$ 1 million was spent in a single extradition attempt to get Quattrocchi from Argentina in 2007 which failed.
The on-going multiple high-profile corruption cases before the Supreme Court and special courts literally mean a field day for our government sleuths who are travelling in hordes on foreign field trips in connections with investigations. Popular destinations include Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, the UK, Cyprus, Italy, Dubai, Singapore, the British Virgin Islands and the Kayman Islands on elusive Havala trail. Millions are being spent on the money trail without a piece of genuinely admissible legal evidence. Under the circumstances, the prospects of prosecution in cases such as 2G, CWG, DB Realty, Hassan Ali and cash-for-MPs look rather bleak.(IPA Service)
These are hardly happy developments especially after the whole nation heard ‘the sense of Parliament’ in the debate on the corruption issue following social activist Anna Hazare’s 12-day fast in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan. The fear is that these events, coming so close on the heels of a nation-wide civil society agitation against growing corruption in public life, may further widen the ‘trust deficit’ which exists between the public and the government. (IPA Service)