Adarsh: The joke is on us – the lynch mob

This has to be the Adarsh joke on all of us. If there’s a hint of pun in it, it is intended. After two years of media hullabaloo and the sacking of a chief minister over the Adarsh Housing Society scam in Mumbai, it appears to be the case of a molehill mistaken for a mountain. If the observation of a two-member judicial panel looking into the ownership claim on the land on which the 31-storey building was constructed goes undisputed, the zing in the case goes. With the big conspiracy angle gone, what would remain of the case are graft charges. It would surely be damp squib of an ending to a supposedly blockbuster scandal. The panel ruled that the land belongs to the state government and not the defence ministry. The ministry of defence failed to submit credible evidence to substantiate their claim that the land was in existence since 25 August 1821, and in continuous possession and use of the defence establishment. While the Army failed to back its contention that it was in possession of the land prior to 1937, the state was able to disprove the claim with concrete proof. [caption id=“attachment_279920” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Screengrab from ibnlive.com”] [/caption] The commission also ruled that the land or the membership of the society was not reserved for housing defence personnel or Kargil war heroes. The two rulings virtually dismantle the moral core of the outrage over the Adarsh scam. The panel puts a weak disclaimer though: the rulings are based on preponderance of probability not proof beyond reasonable doubt. Nobody has got a clean chit in the case yet and the panel is still looking into 11 other areas in its terms of reference. The CBI, which is looking into the corruption angle, has asserted that it would proceed with the cases despite the panel’s ruling. It is still possible that some top bureaucrats and politicians would be behind the bars. But the case is nowhere close to how it started out. Three former chief ministers of the state – Ashok Chavan, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde – can claim a moral victory now. They were accused of conniving with the members of the society to illegally acquire Army land. Under unprecedented media pressure, Chavan had to quit as chief minister. Shunned by party colleagues he is still in political wilderness. Deshmukh and Shinde, both Union ministers, have not faced a similar predicament but they had to carry the burden accusations, a serious threat to their political careers. Now, what was the whole commotion about? Was Chavan pronounced guilty even before he was given a fair trial? Was the media conducting a kangaroo court to punish the former chief minister? Was the party high command unnecessarily worried about the potential fallout of bad publicity he was getting for the party? The case of BS Yedyurappa, the former chief minister of Karnataka, follows a similar trajectory. The Lokayukta report pronounced him guilty of serious wrong-doing and he had to quit his job to save his party, the BJP, embarrassment. The Karnataka high court later dismissed the Lokayukta’s report saying it established no link between the alleged cases of illegality and corruption. Both Chavan and Yedyurappa might still come out guilty. But is it fair to punish someone just on the basis of allegations? If allegations are made the reason to throw out people holding constitutional offices, there would be no end to it. `Innocent till proven guilty’ — that is one of the fundamental principles of Indian jurisprudence. The media and overeager citizen groups have turned it upside down: Guilty till proven innocent. What is obvious in the Adarsh case is little effort had gone into verifying facts and claims. Many in the media were focusing more on hyping the case, putting ingenious spins to information fed by dubious sources. It helped that the land involved defence establishment and Kargil war heroes – both sentimental issues for people at large. Why can’t we wait for the judiciary to do its job? Wouldn’t that make us look more balanced?