Ailed Raja jailed at last, screamed the front-page headline spread across all of eight columns of an English daily in India. The reference was to former telecom minister A. Raja, who was at the centre of a huge corruption scandal.?
Two of his close aides were also arrested in connection with the arbitrary grant of telecom licenses to hand-picked parties three years ago, touching off a huge public outcry against a humongous scam.?
It was the unrelenting campaign against corruption of the Manmohan Singh government which culminated in the arrest of the 47-year-old Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam (DMK) politician last week.?
Groomed by DMK patriarch and Tamil Nadu (a southern state in India) Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi as the party’s subaltern face, Raja, a forceful Tamil orator, had risen fast in the party hierarchy.?
From the word go, he set out to grant licenses for the launch of new cellular phone services to only those who would do “business” with him.?
Applications for allotment of 2-G spectrum were arbitrarily rejected, eligibility criterion willfully changed, time deadlines for submission of applications surreptitiously altered to issue 157 licenses out of the 500-odd applicants.?
Some of the successful applicants did not meet basic conditions.?
Others immediately encashed the licenses at huge profits while still others failed to launch operations even after getting the licenses.?
In sum, it was a huge scam which the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) of India reckoned could cost the taxpayers anything between US$12 billion to $35 billion.?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had stoutly defended Raja, arguing that he had done no wrong.?
Even when tell-tale evidence of wrong-doing surfaced, the government stuck to its ‘no-wrong-was-done’ position.?
However, the report of the CAG and the intervention of the Supreme Court forced India’s central government to relent.?
Last November, Raja was made to resign and the apex court undertook to monitor the investigations in the case.?
The government was on the back foot not only because of Raja’s 2-G scam but due to a series of such scandals.?
Judicial activism had further exposed its seamier side.?
It had tied itself in knots in the appointment of a controversial official as the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The chief ombudsman of the government was expected to be above reproach.?
But retired bureaucrat, P. V. Thomas, was himself listed as an accused in an old corruption case.?
This was by no means the only embarrassment for the Govern-ment.?
The investigations in the Commonwealth Games corruption scandal, too, were moving at a snail’s pace.?
Three aides of Suresh Kalmadi, the head of the Games Organizing Committee, were arrested but had to be released for want of a charge-sheet.?
Kalmadi, a Congress MP, was interrogated a couple of times but, as yet, there was no move to arrest him.?
Ordinary people believed that he was the kingpin in the scam.?
In the season of scams, more muck piled up for the government when it was revealed that the government-controlled broadcaster, Doordarshan, had contracted with a British company to telecast the Games at an exorbitantly inflated price.?
China Daily Asia Weekly on February 11, 2011, page 04
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