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THE NATION:
P.V. NARASIMHA RAO
Bribe
Gloom
The
former prime minister's conviction snuffs out his plans to play a larger
role in Congress affairs. But though the dissidents have lost a rallying
point, they are going to press ahead with their anti-Sonia campaign.
By
Lakshmi Iyer
Among
the many distinctions that Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao has is that
he is the first prime minister outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete
a full five-year term. While in office he created history by taking the
first tenuous steps towards dismantling the nation's dirigiste, controls-ridden
economy. He was widely hailed for making the economic policy transition
painless. All that, of course, was until last week when Rao's six-decade-old
standing in public life was shredded to bits in a packed courtroom at
Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi. As Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke held
him guilty in the Rs 3-crore Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case, Rao
went down in history as the country's first ever former prime minister
to be convicted. He was held guilty not for receiving bribes but for benefiting
from the disbursal of slush funds by some of his colleagues in the Cabinet
and the party. The disbursal had helped his minority government-elected
to office in June 1991 with an effective strength of 251 MPs in a House
of 528 members-complete its five-year term.
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| Even
Rao baiters in the Congress say that the verdict was harsh |
At the end
of the trial that lasted over four years, the special court convicted
Rao and his former cabinet colleague Buta Singh for abetting (under the
Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988) and conspiring (under the Indian Penal
Code) to bribe 10 members of Parliament belonging to the Jharkhand Mukti
Morcha and Janata Dal (Ajit) to vote out a no-confidence motion tabled
against the Rao government in the Lok Sabha in July 1993. At the same
time the court gave the benefit of doubt and acquitted Rao's other former
cabinet colleagues such as Satish Sharma, Bhajan Lal and Ajit Singh, and
six others. As the Telugu bidda staggered out of the packed courtroom
in Vigyan Bhavan and slumped into a sofa, there were few who felt he deserved
it.
Even the
legion of foes in the Congress that Rao acquired while in office preferred
to weigh his culpability against his contribution to the country. Rao
may well have headed the most scam-prone government in the country since
independence. Yet the political class as such wants people to remember
him as a man who ushered in an era of economic reforms, restored normalcy
in strife-torn Punjab and provided the country a stable government. In
fact, some political leaders have even begun suggesting that the A.B.
Vajpayee Government ought to pardon him to spare him the trouble of seeking
redressal through higher courts. They cite the US precedent of President
Gerald Ford granting "full, free and absolute pardon" to his
predecessor Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal 26 years ago. "Only
those who are ignorant about the role played by Rao in steering the nation
out of a crisis would be happy with the verdict," asserts a Congress
MP. As contemporary historian Bipan Chandra puts it, "Rao showed
greater courage than Indira and her son Rajiv in pursuing economic reforms.
The country would have benefited if it had embarked on the path of liberalisation
in the 1980s."
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