Corruption week: A tough 7 days for the UPA

After a relative lull over the festivities and holidays of the past week which offered a beleaguered UPA 2 a breather from the almost relentless attacks, the new week is likely to mark an end to the holiday spirit bringing with it many challenges, most of them a throwback from the events of the recent past. Team Anna has come back to hog headlines and haunt the government via a parliamentary by-election in Haryana which in more normal circumstances would have hardly attracted any media attention. Last time, the Congress had finished third in the Hisar constituency and the election would in any case have been a toss off between the Jats and the non-Jats of the area represented respectively by Chautala’s INLD and Kuldeep Bishnoi , whose father’s (Bhajan Lal) death necessitated this election. Bishnoi has also tied up with the BJP. [caption id=“attachment_103341” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Congress leaders are not helping their own cause by constantly taking on team Anna . Reuters”]  [/caption] Congress was running third and nobody was really bothered. But with team Anna deciding to up the ante and asking people to vote against the Congress party for its failure to give an undertaking in favor of the passage of the Jan Lokpal bill in the winter session, stakes for the governing party have suddenly gone up. Congress leaders are not helping their own cause by constantly taking on team Anna and making the anti-graft crusaders more relevant in the Hisar election than they actually are! So with Kejriwal campaigning and Kiran Bedi set to join him, team Anna looks all set to claim its pound of flesh in terms of taking credit for what looks like a certain congress defeat. With most analysts and local pollsters unanimous on the election outcome in Hisar, the only point of interest which remains is the margin of defeat. The Congress party may not find it easy to shrug off a huge defeat in Hisar. For team Anna a big defeat for the Congress will be a shot in the arm and strengthen their campaign for the Jan Lokpal bill. Remaining on the issue of corruption, the Congress also hopes that the Advani Rathyatra against graft — which begins on Tuesday — continues to inspire the same kind of cynicism as it has done till now. But as the Yatra gathers momentum , the situation may actually begin to change and the media may start concentrating less on the BJP’s internal squabbles and Advani’s personal agenda and ambition and take a serious look at the issues he will be raising — graft, black money and weak governance — during the course of his 38-day journey. With the Telangana agitation now reaching the national capital, there’s no way the UPA’s central leadership can ignore the issue any longer. The government’s problem is that after trying to please all sides for such a long time — nearly always on the calling of political expediency rather than judicious thinking — the government suddenly finds itself helpless now that every opinion on the vexed Telangana tangle has got intractable and irreconcilably hardened. But with the state’s economy taking a huge hit and the law and order situation getting out of hand by the day, inaction and dithering is no longer an option. The government will have to come out with a solution which is acceptable to all sides soon. So far that magical formula is eluding them. The one breather which the government had last week was the recess in Supreme Court. With the week long holiday over, the courts once again start monitoring the 2G and cash for vote scams. Any adverse news on either of the 2 cases can result in big trouble for the government. Again their only option is to keep their fingers crossed.