When the Prime Minister openly stated that the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) indulged in corruption to the order of Rs 70,000 crore with specific reference to a scam in a Maharashtra-based bank, the question on many lips was …”and what did he do about it?” While the corruption graph in the country is growing – mainly at the level of the bureaucracy and regional parties, what is well-known is also that PM Modi has soft-pedalled the issue in his two terms. True, there have been no serious charges of corruption against Union ministers, unlike during the Manmohan Singn-led UPA period. Those exposes came as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) raised big questions. A safe assumption today is that Modi controlled corruption at his ministerial and party levels at the apex. Yet the BJP government in Karnataka scripted a different story. Allegations of huge corruption riddled the reputation of the BJP governments there.
As for the NCP, the prime minister had, during an election campaign in Maharashtra in 2014, branded it as the Nationalist Corruption Party. Stories of huge cuts had spread in Delhi when its leader Sharad Pawar was Defence Minister in the Congress led Government. Pawar had to pack his bags and return to Maharashtra in a huff. He or his family has made too much of wealth allegedly through dubious means and he presides over an empire within an empire. Pawar having installed daughter Supriya as successor, his close associates Ajit Pawar and Praful Patel have broken ranks and built bridges with the BJP to share the spoils of power yet again. A couple of years ago, stories had spread about the demand from an NCP home minister –a close Pawar aide – to the Mumbai police to collect Rs 100 crore as bribe from the bars in the metropolis every month. That case is ongoing.
By all reckoning, not just Sharad Pawar but Ajit Pawar as deputy CM in the past and Praful Patel while as Union civil aviation minister, had been accused of stretching the limits of corruption in this country at ministerial levels. Now, both Ajit Pawar and Patel are breaking bread with the BJP. Like Sharad Pawar, most regional satraps are allegedly looting the exchequer and giving a free hand to bureaucrats too to loot; the slush money allegedly ending up in real estate ventures within or tax havens abroad through dubious means. By making public pronouncements, the Prime Minister confirms the kind of organised loot that’s taking place in the country, but also proclaims silently that he as leader of the nation is incapable of stemming this rot.
