Vendetta vs corruption

No one should be surprised that a chargesheet has been filed against Capt Amarinder Singh in a Ludhiana court so close to the elections. This is a political setback for the Congress. The party had come to rely excessively on the supposed mass appeal of Capt Amarinder Singh. The IT Department case has been in the making since 2011 and has not come as a surprise. The Congress leadership must be aware of the consequences and must have factored in the NDA government’s capacity to time it in such a way as to inflict maximum political damage. Whether or not it is Finance Minister Arun Jaitley playing “vendetta politics”, the BJP has the satisfaction of being clever in using its powers for an electoral advantage.

As Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh’s track record was not entirely unblemished. He is saddled with a multi-crore Ludhiana city centre scam case. The Enforcement Directorate is probing a case against him registered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to look into the trail of the scam money. In October the Punjab Vigilance Bureau filed a cancellation report in the infamous Amritsar Improvement Trust land scam, giving a clean chit to the Punjab Congress president. This provoked the Captain’s political opponents to dub it a result of “tacit understanding” with the Badals.

Though the practice of slapping vindictive cases against political opponents is not uncommon in this country, every politician charged with abuse of power takes refuge under the same “vendetta politics” umbrella. Virbhadra Singh and Bhupinder Singh Hooda have taken this line of defence. The cases against in-or-out-of-power politicians should be fast-tracked, especially now that legislators stand disqualified on a jail term of more than two years. The IT Department will have to explain why it took so long to file the case. Clearly, the timing is politically dictated.