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Highlights
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is generally perceived to be an intellectual, no-nonsense and honest politician.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is generally perceived to be an intellectual, no-nonsense and honest politician. But his "knight in shining armor" image has taken a big knocking with the corruption charges levelled against DDCA (Delhi District Cricket Association) during his stewardship of the cricket body by Arvind Kejriwal and other senior leaders of AAP party.
BJP's own MP from Darbhanga and former cricketer Kirti Azad made more specific corruption charges against DDCA, without naning Jaitley, in a press conference held by him. Some of the charges levelled by Kirti Azad are - payments were made to bogus companies, laptops were rented at an exorbitant rent of Rs 16,000 per day, no executive meetings were held before passing bills etc. He backed his charges by presenting a video of Wikileaks4India claiming that DDCA made payments to several fake companies and by playing footage of a DDCA annual general meeting held in 2011 in which Mr Azad questions Mr Jaitley who was in the chair regarding the financial bungling in DDCA.
After cricket, it is Hockey's turn. Former chief of Hockey Federation of India and ex- top cop KPS Gill, has written to Delhi chief minister Mr Kejriwal against Arun Jaitley and of the massive irregularities in Hockey Federation. In his letter to Arvind Kejriwal, Gill said that Mr. Jaitley got his daughter, Sonali Jaitley, appointed in the Legal Committee of Hockey India League and reportedly facilitated payment of huge amounts as fee to her. Now Mr. Jaitley has two options before him.
First Option - to come out unscathed from the alleged DDCA scam in the same manner as party patriarch LK Advani emerged clean from the Hawala case as wished by PM. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will emerge with “flying colours” from the DDCA scam in the same way party veteran L K Advani did when his name was dragged into an alleged hawala scandal in the 1990s.
Second Option - defend himself by rejecting the credibility of charges levelled against him & DDCA and by levelling counter charges, defamation cases etc against his opponents in other political parties and by suspending from the party the opponents In a veiled message to the Modi government in the wake of the controversy over Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje in the ex- IPL chief Lalit Modi case, BJP patriarch LK Advani said in June that there is a need to maintain probity in public life and recalled how he resigned soon after his name cropped up in the Hawala scam. Entries found in the diaries of Hawala broker SK Jain contained the name of Mr. LK Advani also. Soon after the said allegations against him, Mr Advani resigned as an MP in 1996 and he was consequently re-elected in 1998 after his name had been cleared by the court.
"The day allegations were raised against me based on Jain diaries that evening itself sitting in my house in Pandara road I took the decision to resign(as MP). It was no one else's decision, it was mine. Soon after I called up (Atal Bihari) Vajapyee to inform my decision. He asked me not to resign but I did not listen to anyone. For a politician, to command people's trust is the biggest responsibility. What morality demands that is 'rajdharma' and need to maintain probity in public life" Advani said.
The second option, ofcourse, is a trodden path taken by all and sundry politicians. This option will only give credence to the far-fetched Political Mudslinging statements of parties like AAP that "Arun Jaitley is the BJP's Kalmadi ". As BJP claims to be a corrupt-free political party and Mr. Jaitley being a key mascot of the corruption-free governance of BJP, the Finance Minister may follow the path shown by BJP patriarch LK Advani in all humility to maintain probity in public life, rather than indulging in Self-righteousness.
By V.Venkateswara Rao
(Author is a management professional and alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad)
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