COALGATE: WHY TRYING TO SHIELD THE ISSUE?

By Kajol Singh / New Delhi

Two topmost law officers of the country—Attorney General GE Vahanvati and his former deputy Harin Raval—lied before the Supreme Court that they had not gone through the CBI’s status report on Coalgate.

An overenthusiastic Law Minister Ashwini Kumar acted more loyal than the king by deleting references that could have shown his principal benefactor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in poor light.

PMO and coal ministry officials traveled to the CBI headquarters to see the draft report and to ensure that changes as wished by them were incorporated.

CBI Director Ranjit Sinha has bared some such hard facts in his sworn affidavit before the Supreme Court.

The revelations, as contained in the affidavit, give rise to some simple queries: at whose behest the law minister, attorney general, the two joint secretaries of the PMO and coal ministry, Shtrughan Singh and AK Bhalla, were acting? Whose interest were they so zealously trying to protect? Was the prime minister completely ignorant of what was going on around him when his handpicked law minister was deleting and dictating paragraphs in the status report and his joint secretary was further vetting the report?

They were certainly not doing a cover up to save their skin in Coalgate. Shatrughan Singh and AK Bhalla could not have acted on their own. It’s a well-known fact that bureaucrats of their seniority would need some authorisation from someone at the top to make a trip to the CBI headquarters together and do what they were perhaps not mandated for.

It could have been more damaging for the UPA government in the general, and the prime minister in particular. Ashwini Kumar is a personal favorite of Manmohan Singh, who has come out openly to provide a protective shield to Kumar, something the latter desperately needed, both in the public and as reports suggest within the Congress’s Core Group meeting. Singh’s junior minister in the PMO and in the DoPT (which has administrative control of CBI) V Narayansami took the plea that since the matter was pending in the court, the government would first see what view the Supreme Court takes when it hears the matter on Wednesday. The same position was taken by other ministers and senior Congress leaders.

There are many in the government who believe that AG Vahanvati’s position has become untenable. ASG Raval has already become a casualty. But if action is taken against Vahanvati then how could PM and Congress protect Ashwini Kumar? An indecisive government has decided to leave it to the Supreme Court to take a view on their role and act accordingly, if pushed to a corner.

The Karnataka results to be announced on same date would become vitally important for the Congress. The party’s defiant attitude and attempts to brazen it out come from the leadership’s assessment of potential results of Karnataka polls, where the Congress is expected to decimate the BJP. The thought process which apparently guided the party’s calculation is that sacrificing ministers would not really make the popular perception of the Congress any better. Moreover, the taint of CWG, 2G and Coalgate scams has not really affected the Congress’s prospects in states. The Congress likes to be guided by party’s success in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka than bowing to the opposition BJP’s pressure.

It was no coincidence that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath and Information and Boardcasting Minister Manish Tiwari chose to elaborate more on the Karnataka results when queried on issues of legal and moral propriety involved in the case of two Union ministers, Bansal and Kumar.

The facts as revealed in the affidavit clearly suggest that after public furore, media criticism and Supreme Court taking serious cognizance of his efforts to tone down the status report, Ashwini Kumar tried to mislead even his peers in the Congress and in the government. He had told his party colleagues that the said meeting of 6 March was called by Attorney General for consultation whereas the CBI Director has told Supreme Court that he had gone to law minister’s chamber with the report at his behest.

“The tentative finding about non-existence of a system regarding allocation of specific weightage/points was deleted at the instance of the officials of PMO and the coal ministry…The other tentative findings about non-preparation of broadsheet or chart by the screening committee to the best of my recollection was deleted by the law minister,” the affidavit said. It further says that “The deletion of a sentence about the scope of inquiry with respect to illegalities of allocation while the amendment to law was in process, was done by law minister.”

The affidavit says that the AG and ASG were present in the meeting held by the law minister and later the AG held a separate meeting. But after having stated these facts, he also tried to protect the government and these functionaries. He says “the changes made by the law minister, PMO and coal ministry officials were accepted by the CBI as they pertained to its tentative finding”, which could mean that the CBI itself was not sure of the veracity of the tentative findings. But would CBI show same grace to those against whom it is investigating a case?

“It is submitted that sharing of status report with the persons mentioned above and the consequent changes therein have neither altered the central theme of the report nor shifted the focus of the inquiry or investigation in any manner. The central theme of the status report had not changed post meetings. There were no deletions of any evidence against any suspect or accused nor were any let off,” the affidavit said.

The petitioner and counsel for Common Cause, Prashant Bhushan says, “How does one believe that?”