By-products of having an outsourced Prime Minister

Sumatibala Ningthoujam *

Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi visit Imphal on 03 December 2011 :: Pix - David M Mayum

"By-products of having an outsourced Prime Minister" Dr. Manmohan Singh Kohli is the worst Prime Minister of Independent India. In 1991 he was the Finance Minister in Narashimha Rao's Govt and considered as the key person in development of Indian Economy by introducing sturdy reforms in Indian Economic Sector. However since Smt. Sonia Gandhi had outsourced the prime Ministership to Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2004, many questions had cropped up regarding his leadership quality. As a Prime Minister he has been often accused of being an "Under Achiever".

The recent series of high profile scams are enough to show that his Cabinet is full of corrupted people. In short his govt's performance has shown inability to perform for the welfare and development of the people. His lack of decision taking skills has also degraded his image all over the world. He has been severely criticised for the inability to take his own decision. He is an efficient economist with a very poor leadership quality. He had never taken any critical decision from his point of view as a leader of the nation who works for the development of the nation. Instead, he had taken all the important decisions under the pressure of his corrupted party members. His dull attitude has contributed a very negative impression about his personality.

When he came to Manipur on 2nd December, 2006 he had dully announced at Kangla that the AFSPA-1958 would be amended on the basis of the Jeevan Reddy Commission's Repeat to make it more humane. But the moment he reached Delhi, he had completely forgotten what he had said while in Manipur. Also he had publicly announced that a JPC would be set up to investigate the world famous 2G scan. However all his wordings have done nothing other than wasting time and money of the poor people. As an indecisive outsourced Prime Minister he has been leading two Successive UPA Governments.

UPA-2 comes out to be the most corrupted Govt to date with the world famous scams namely Coalgate, 2G Scams CWG Scam etc, etc. Dr. Manmohan Singh is alleged to be the main culprit of the Coalgate scam the Biggest one in the history of India. These scams have generated a big question on his leadership quality and the way how his govt and his cabinet ministers have looted the Indian resources. He has totally failed to explain how he had handled the situation of all the scandals. If it were a strong govt, it would

have definitely taken a strong decision against all the corruption reports. Coalgate (coal allocation scam) is the biggest political scandal concerning the Indian govt's allocation of the nation's coal deposits to public sector entities and private companies by PM Manmohan Singh. After CAG, the Comptroller and Auditor general of India had exposed the scam in march, 2012 the main opposition Party BJP had lodged a complaint resulting in a CBI probe into whether the allocation of the coal blocks had been influenced by corruption. Unfortunately, the PM had rebutted the CAG's final report and rejected the CBI report saying that "CBI is not the final words on this". However, throughout 2012, the question of corruption had dominated all the discussion. Then in response to a complaint by the BJP performing its constitutional responsibility, Central Vigilance Commission has directed the CBI to investigate the Coalgate.

Subsequently, the CBI had been pursuing the case till today. BJP had been protesting the government's handling of the issue demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister. The Parliamentary Standing Committee Report on coal and steel stated that all the coal blocks distributed between 1993 and 2008 were done in a highly unauthorized manner and so allotment of all mines where productions were yet to start should be cancelled. Instead of coming clean on why his Ministers and officers have vetted the CBI's investigation report, the Prime Minister is offering unjustifiable and unacceptable logic simply to protect them. In fact the uninterrupted protest going on in parliament is essentially a protest against the high-profile scams and the UPA-Govt's effort to cover it.

This is the fight against corruption and the Govt's effort to cover it up. Democracy is being butchered by the UPA-Govt. Much to our chagrin, in a democratic country, we all are led by a (outsourced) Prime Minister who has not been elected by us. Dr. Manmohan Singh had never contested in the election and had not been elected by the people. Otherwise, the first step of accountability would have got the Prime Minister and his Law Minister resigned by now. But the Prime Minister is rigidly rejecting the justifiable demand of his Law minister's and his resignation as he wants to use the Law minister as a human shield. By now it is crystal-clear that UPA-Govt was doing its best to influence the investigating agency in favour of the Govt. Even the Attorney-General G.E.

Vahanvati and additional solicitor General Haren Ravel had lied to and misled the Supreme Court in favour of the Govt. The nation would not have got to know of their wilful perpetration of a Govt lie, had it not been the admission of the CBI Director, Ranjeet Sinha that the draft of the Status - Report had been shared with Law Minister Ashwani Kumar as desired by him prior to the submission before the supreme court. Legally the Law Minister does not have the authority to vet the CBI report. In addition to the Law Minister, the Report was also shared with a Joint Secretary Level Officer from PMO and Ministry of coal. It is a matter of great shame that the Highest Court of the country has observed on April 30, 2013 that there was a massive breach of trust in the Coal Scam Report.

Now the Supreme court, supervising the Coalgate investigation , has directed CBI to file a "Candid and truthful" Affidavit by 6th may, 2013 on: 1) why the status report dated 8/3/13 was shared with officials& political bosses 2) why the CBI said in court it was not shared 3) why did April 26 affidavit not contain what changes were made at whose instance 4) what's CBI protocol on sharing of status reports 5) CBI must provide profiles of the senior officials probing coal scam Today, everybody knows that UPA-Govt had exerted tremendous pressure on the CBI Director to lie under oath and file a false affidavit in the court. A source from CBI says it was after a series of meetings with his top teams that Mr. Sinha was persuaded not to pay any heed to the Govt's Advise.

His top aides told him at these meetings about the fact that the supreme court has sought a specific affidavit from the CBI director saying that the draft report had not been shared with the political executive meant that it already had reasonable doubt or maybe even soundproof to the contrary. In such a situation a false affidavit by the Director of CBI before the Supreme court would constitute a grave propriety and contempt of court. Subsequently, Mr. Sinha had presumed that the political executive would escape unscathed, but he would have to face the full wrath of the court and the consequences thereupon including his going to jail. He had ultimately resisted the Govt's advise. The fact that he has just been appointed and can't be removed by the Govt before he completes two years was the prime reason for his "sticking-to-the-truth", and he will definitely go down in Indian History as the first CBI Director to file an affidavit against the known position of the Govt of the day.

Status of the 2G scam:- The possibility of accepting the JPC draft report prepared by Mr. P.C.Chacho on behalf of the committee on the 2G scam has been diminished further with fifteen opposition MPs on the 30 member panel has rejected the report that gives the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh a clean chit. Even though the same set of MPs have written to the Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar expressing lack of confidence in JPC Chairman P.C. Chacho, the decision has been ultimately left to Mr. Chacho.

Mr. Chacho's report says that in 2008, the Telecom Minister A. Raja misled the Prime Minister and manipulated a first come-first serve policy to push the ineligible companies to the top of a long line of applicants for mobile network licences and 2G air waves. However, A. Raja says he did everything with full knowledge of Prime Minister. Mr. Raja wants to testify for the committee but Mr. Chacho, Chairman of the JPC has overlooked the matter. Being disallowed from deposing, Mr. Raja has sent a forty page note explaining his actions to the committee. He said that he kept the Prime Minister updated in person and in notes on his policy. All the opposition parties say that Mr. Raja should have been allowed to present his version of events to the panel. Till today Mr Raja's version is being overlooked.

UPA-Govt is utterly fail in foreign affairs also. To mention a few failure foreign issues:-1).Chinese Intrusion 19 Km inside Indian teritory had been termed as a localised issue by our Prime Minister. 2) Beheading of Indian soldier across the LOC by Pakishtani Army could not be challenged. Sharabjit Singh could have been saved had Indian govt acted timely and many more similar issues are there unresolved. Earlier Dr Manmohon Singh was alleged to have said that he was ready to step down in favour of Mr Rahul Gandhi.

So reviewing the prevailing UPA- Govt's pathetic status the Prime Minister can better accept the Opposition parties justifiable demand of his and his Law Minister's resignation. Recently The Washington Post has described Manmohon Singh as a "tragic figure" who may go down in the Comic History. Not only in India, his image has been globally damaged in an irreversible way.