SC gives PM an alibi for his inaction. He doesn’t deserve it.

Badshah Shah Alam Az Dilli ta Palam

Of the 18th century Mughal ruler Shah Alam II, it was sneeringly said that his Sultanate stretched all the way from Delhi to Palam! Within that ‘empire’, which bore testimony to his vastly shrunken influence, the Sultan, it was said, reigned supreme! It appears, however, that for all his limits to authority, Shah Alam was virtually a ‘shah alam’ (Emperor of the World) compared to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose writ, it appears, doesn’t even extend as far as the Prime Minister’s Office. In its verdict on Tuesday on Subramanian Swamy’s petition questioning the delay in the permission he sought from the Prime Minister to prosecute A Raja in the 2G spectrum case, the Supreme Court went to great lengths to shield Manmohan Singh from personal culpability. [caption id=“attachment_189102” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“It wasn’t that Manmohan Singh didn’t know mischief was afoot in the 2G spectrum sale. He chose to look away. PTI”] [/caption] It instead blamed the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministry of law and justice for their failure to convey the gravity of the charges that Swamy had brought forth against Raja. “In our view,” the judges ruled, “officers in the PMO and the ministry of law and justice were duty-bound to apprise (the Prime Minister) about the seriousness of allegations made by (Swamy) and judgments of this court…” They further said: “By the very nature of the office held by him, (the Prime Minister) is not expected to personally look into minute details of each and every case placed before him and has to depend on his advisers and other officers. Unfortunately, those expected to give him proper advice and place full facts and legal position before him failed to do so. “We have no doubt,” the judges added, “that if (the Prime Minister) had been apprised of the true factual and legal position regarding the representation made by Dr Swamy, he would have surely taken an appropriate decision…” The government was quick to clutch at the straw of deniability that the Supreme Court judges gave the Prime Minister. A statement from the PMO said, “We welcome the fact that … the learned judges have completely vindicated the Prime Minister whilst appreciating the onerous duties of his office.” The learned judges have, in their wisdom, given the benefit of the doubt to the Prime Minister in this case. Yet, a closer analysis – that goes beyond just the legal minutiae - of the circumstances in which the Prime Minister sat on the petition from Swamy may reveal that Manmohan Singh may not be entirely worthy of that benefit of the doubt. It’s true of course that tracing personal culpability of the Prime Minister in “each and every case” is a stretch. But the 2G scandal wasn’t just another routine case. Even at the time that Swamy had petitioned the Prime Minister, it was becoming clear that this was the mother of all corruption scandals. Even for a Prime Minister who was distracted by numerous affairs of state, the red flag that marked it as a matter of grave importance should have gone up. For instance, even as far back as in 2006, IT minister Dayanidhi Maran, then a virtual nobody from nowhere, wrote to Manmohan Singh that spectrum pricing should be left to him, rather than to the group of ministers as had been envisaged. That’s the kind of discretionary authority that ought never to have been given, but the Prime Minister surrendered tamely. Even subsequently, when it became clear to Manmohan Singh that Telecom Minister A Raja was playing fast and loose with the policy on spectrum pricing, he initially pushed back – because he knew the implications of Raja’s mala fide actions. Yet, he allowed himself eventually to be bulldozed by Raja: in the final act of surrender, Manmohan Singh’s private secretary asked that the Prime Minister’s Office be “kept at arm’s length” from the policy decision. In other words, it wasn’t that Manmohan Singh didn’t know all along what was going on: he capitulated too readily to what was clearly an attempt to hijack official policy for gain. He subsequently defended his inaction as arising from the constraints that “coalition dharma” placed on him. In other words, it wasn’t that he was blind: he chose not to see. And there are none so blind as those. For that reason alone, Manmohan Singh is unworthy of the benefit of the doubt that the Supreme Court judges give him. It is nobody’s case that all of this renders Manmohan Singh personally culpable in the scandal. Even his worst detractors concede to his personal probity. But as Prime Minister, at whose desk the buck finally stops, Manmohan Singh wilfully looked the other way – even when it was brought to his notice that mischief was afoot. On that count, Manmohan Singh doesn’t deserve the long rope of deniability that the learned judges have given him.