CONGRESS IN A MESS

The incessant episodes involving improprieties by members of the UPA Govt have been robbing it of its due share of credit for good governance

Granted that the corporate media and the urban middle class have harboured a distinct bias against this party and exaggerated its sins.

Granted, too, that part of the problem is that it has failed to sell its good work in a fitting manner and that it is not using dirty tricks to tame its enemies.

Yet even the best of Congress’s friends will be hard put to ignore the recent happenings. The party has taken a severe beating in public perception with the latest accusations:

a. Pawan Kumar Bansal can scarcely escape his accountability for the conduct of his nephew who was also his poll manager. Coupled with alarming reports of miraculous jump in the wealth of his immediate family, all this does raise serious questions about his integrity. Propriety demands that he step aside till the on-going investigations exonerate him. It is bewildering that Sonia Gandhi kept him on. Or has she, post Robert Vadra allegations, become skeptical of accusations/

b. For the Supreme Court to truly expect the CBI to be independent of the government was, to say the least, naive. It cannot. But having acquiesced to this decision [by not challenging it] the government took the responsibility to not interfere with its investigation into the scam infamously called the Coalgate. Their defense for the law minister, the coal minister and the officials of the PMO ‘seeing’ the CBI report and making ‘insubstantial’ changes thereto is at best ludicrous, and is clearly a contempt of the court, as the law stands.

If there was any occasion for anyone to feel uncomfortable with the integrity of the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, it now is. He cannot claim to not having been a party to all this. Indeed, this interference hurts his reputation more than the actual Coalgate where the benefit of doubt was available to him.

All in all disturbing times for the grand old party, and currently the least worst option for most Indians!