POLITICS-INDIA: Opposition Smells Revival Chances in Arms Scam

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2001 (IPS) - India’s main opposition Congress party, in the political wilderness since 1996 for past venality, sees chances for its revival in the arms bribery scandal that has rocked the political party and government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

On Monday, the Congress party, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian- born heir to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, stalled the important budget session of Parliament for the fourth day running.

It demanded the government’s resignation over the scam, which has directly involved Bangaru Laxman, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Vaypayee.

Journalists from the media website ‘ Tehelka’ (‘Sensation’), posing as arms dealers, used spy cameras to capture Laxman on tape accepting wads of currency notes and promising to promote a fictitious deal to sell night-vision binoculars to the Indian army.

Tehelka’s expose last week forced the resignation of Laxman and Defence Minister George Fernandes. In a televised address to the nation Friday, a visibly shaken Vaypayee announced a probe into the scandal to be undertaken by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.

A documentary put together from tapes and shown to the press on Tuesday by ‘Tehelka’ also deeply implicated top bureaucrats, army officers and bigwigs in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP.

The resignations and Vajpayee’s offer of a probe have not satisfied the Congress party which, joined by left-wing and socialist political formations in the opposition, has declared that it would not allow Parliament to function until the government goes “lock stock and barrel.” .

At a weekend convention of the party in the southern city of Bangalore, Gandhi symbolically unsheathed a sword and pledged war on this “corrupt, shameful and communal government”.

Confident that the Congress party cannot muster the required numbers in Parliament, Vajpayee responded by challenging it to a trial-of- strength in the Lok Sabha (the lawmaking lower house of Parliament) or else allow it to function.

But Gandhi said the Congress party wants the government to resign on moral grounds, no matter the numbers. On Monday, her party led the disruption of proceedings in the house by crowding around the speaker’s chair and shouting slogans like “soldiers are dying while the government makes money on deals”.

A BJP minister, Venkiah Naidu, said the government may now have to resort to a “vote-on-account” to enable it to continue drawing money after the fiscal year ends on Mar. 31, if the budget is not passed in time by the house.

Surpassing in sensation any of the various corrupt deals the Congress party itself has suffered from, the arms bribery scandal has the potential of reviving the fortunes of the party that led India to independence from colonial rule and ruled for 45 of the 54 years since then.

Gandhi, supported by left-wing and socialist groups, successfully ousted an NDA government led by Vajpayee in April 1999. But she found herself unable to form a government because of disagreement on what shape the new coalition would take.

Groups such as the powerful Samajwadi Party, led by former northern Uttar Pradesh state Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, had said they could not support the candidature of Gandhi as prime minister because of her foreign birth.

A large faction of the Congress party led by the former chief minister of western Maharashtra state, Sharad Pawar, splintered away to form the National Congress party (NCP) on similar grounds.

The result was that fresh elections had to be called. The Congress party then suffered its worst ever electoral defeat — and the BJP and its allies in the NDA went on to form the present 17-month-old government under Vajpayee.

This time around, a chastened Gandhi has taken care to announce that the Congress party would be more accommodating of allies in a possible alternative coalition.

She would need support from an alliance of left and socialist opposition parties called the People’s Front, which was launched after the ‘Tehelka’ expose and which has announced that it has common interests with the Congress party in seeing the ouster of the Vajpayee government.

The Congress party’s immediate concern is elections to four state assemblies which have completed their terms, and where the party’s chances of winning may improved considerably as a result of the bribery scam.

Observers said the outcome of upcoming elections in eastern Assam and West Bengal and in southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu states and in the centrally-ruled former French enclave of Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu would serve as a verdict on the rule of the Vajpayee government.

“Past experience shows that the people do not forgive charges of corruption by governments,” said Mahesh Rangarajan, a political commentator.

According to Somnath Chatterjee, leader of the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) in Parliament, his party has always opposed the corruption of the Congress party but the communalism of the right-wing, pro- Hindu BJP was worse. The CPI-M is in power in Kerala and West Bengal.

Still, the Congress party has yet live down charges that its leader Rajiv Gandhi collected kickbacks in a deal to buy howitzers from the Swedish gun maker Bofors in the mid-eighties. Hearings in the case are still continuing — 15 years after the deal was struck.