It was a sight to behold. Not many such scenes can you easily reminisce from the past nor expect such spectacles to occur in the future. The wise men of India have aptly termed such a rare phenomenon as “na bhooto na bhavishyati”! On Sunday evening, the 3rd of February, a team of 40 odd CBI sleuths reached the residence of Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar to question him in connection with the Saradha Chit Fund Scam. To their utter disbelief they were not only stopped by the Kolkata police from reaching Kumar but some CBI officers were even briefly detained in a nearby police station.
Such a faceoff was truly embarrassing with the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee (popularly known as Didi) rushing to the residence of Kolkata’s top cop. By night time, Central forces had been deployed at the CGO Complex housing the CBI office in Kolkata. But more drama was to follow with Didi staging a sit-in protest in front of Kolkata’s landmark Metro Cinema at Esplanade. She was soon joined by her cabinet colleagues, the Kolkata Police Commissioner and a boisterous media circus.
Accusing the Centre of endangering India’s federal structure and disregarding the Constitution by attempting to stage a coup against her government, Didi imperceptibly invoked Bengali pride, played victim card to the hilt and made it amply clear that she had no intention of being cowed down by such brazen intimidation by the Centre in her own backyard. Histrionics was not the sole preserve of Mr. Modi, Didi did it one better and consolidated her reputation as the original ‘street-fighter’.
COMPETING VERSIONS TO CLAIM MORAL HIGH GROUND
It was obvious that the Centre would knock at the doors of the apex court with our Home Minister talking about “constitutional breakdown” amid apprehensions of President’s rule being imposed in West Bengal. The Supreme Court ordered that the CBI could not arrest Kumar but he must cooperate with the CBI investigation into the Saradha Scam. However, his questioning must be carried out on neutral territory namely Meghalaya. Immediately the government and the ruling party touted this as a vindication of their approach as the judiciary had cleared the way for the CBI probe.
Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee and her party the Trinamool Congress (TMC) talked about a moral victory, saying they welcome the verdict of the apex court which restrained the highhanded attitude of the Centre. They were always willing to cooperate in any probe but would refuse to be bullied and face political vendetta without fighting back.
SHIFTING LOYALTIES AND SARADHA SCAM
The Saradha Scam was a major financial scam caused by the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by a consortium of over 200 private companies. The group had collected around twenty to thirty thousand crore rupees from small investors before it collapsed in April 2013. Mamata, who was the then Chief Minister, ordered a judicial enquiry into the scam. The Centre intervened and the CBI started investigations in 2014. Among the many accused in the scam were Himanta Biswa Sarma and Mukul Roy, both of whom joined the BJP from the Congress and the TMC respectively during the probe.
Didi is now daring the BJP and the Prime Minister to arrest Sarma if it is serious about fighting corruption. Obviously shifting loyalties has paid huge dividends to Sarma, who is now the Finance Minister in the BJP government running Assam. It has also handed Didi political ammunition to accuse the BJP of shielding the corrupt and misusing state institutions to serve its political agenda.
THE ROLE OF THE CBI
Once dubbed by none other than the Supreme Court of India as “a caged parrot” and “his master’s voice”, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) must struggle hard to get rid of this sobriquet. The CBI was formed by the “Delhi Special Police Establishment Act” in 1946 with its jurisdiction extended to all the Union Territories and also to the States with the consent of the State Government concerned. Over the years it established a reputation for impartiality and competence and demands were made on it to take up investigation of more cases of conventional crime such as murder, kidnapping, terrorism, etc. In 1987 two investigation divisions of the CBI were established namely, Anti-Corruption Division and Special Crimes Division, the latter dealing with cases of conventional crime, besides economic offences.
Obviously a premier agency with such vast powers must be led by men of integrity and complete commitment to the job to carry out the required inquiry regardless of the political power and financial muscle of the accused. With such officers of high moral uprightness being in short supply, along with the falling standards of probity in the political class, there was bound to be misuse of state machinery for vested interests. The CBI business flourished but its reputation took a beating.
ISSUES THE STANDOFF THROWS UP
There are some important issues that crop up amidst the high drama of CBI trying to browbeat Didi. One is of course the question of state of “federalism” in our country. The other is about misuse of state institutions while a third question is about the conduct and character of those in the highest echelons of power in our country.
FEDERALISM TAKES A HIT
India is a nation with a federal form of government. Our founding fathers and the framers of our Constitution gave ample powers to the Centre but at the same time ensured that the states were not mere pawns of the Central government. They too had rights to flourish and prosper without interference within the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution.
This balance of power between the Centre and states has worked quite resiliently barring a few exceptions. Hence the case of CBI men barging in the Police Commissioner’s residence with the purported intention of saving incriminating evidence in the Saradha Scam suspecting that the top cop of Kolkata would tamper and destroy it to shield the guilty was an instance of audacious adventurism by some overzealous CBI cops wanting to please their political bosses with some quick ‘shock and awe’.
It was to be a night of “federal might” unleashed on a hapless state police but as the nation learnt to its great discomfort Didi – the Bengal tigress pulled no punches and gave a 180 degree twist to the original plot. Political antagonism soared but India’s federalism floundered to its lowest ebbs.
MISUSE OF STATE INSTITUTIONS
Our Constitution imparts the state with a system of checks and balances through various autonomous and independent institutions like the judiciary, the central bank, the election commission and gives freedom to non-state actors like NGOs, civil society, human rights organisations and the media to play their respective roles in monitoring and giving their opinion regarding the way in which the lawmakers and the government are conducting the affairs of the nation. Although the legislature is directly elected by the people, it cannot claim to be the exclusive vanguard of democracy demanding subservience by all other institutions.
It is bounden duty of the government to abide by the norms and spirit of our Constitution and act in a democratic manner to ensure harmony and balance between the state and its institutions. If this balance is broken and disregard to democratic values is set aside then the very foundations of our democratic, federal polity are shaken and we have such episodes in which state actors are pitted against each other under full glare of the public.
CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF THE RULING ELITE
It does not require great political acumen to decipher what both the BJP and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had in mind as the failed coup d’etat by the CBI played out in the media. The 2019 parliamentary elections are round the corner and the Central government is desperate to derive maximum mileage out of any opportunity to demonstrate its anti-corruption commitment. By sending CBI inside the den of the Bengal tigress, the message the government wanted to give was that the fulcrum of opposition unity (the CBI raid happened less than three weeks after a spectacular rally by all the opposition parties in Kolkata and hosted by Mamata) was herself shielding the corrupt and they could humiliate her by arresting one of her top cops.
Some experts say that Didi was anticipating such antics by the Centre and her whole response to the CBI raid was already scripted, directing her to confront the Centre expanding her all-India stature and sending a “don’t mess with me” signal to the ruling dispensation. This intense, no holds barred style of political conduct shows a basic human weakness which is the craving to remain in power without any regard to basic norms of probity and righteousness. Reducing political discourse to polemics and gloating in rhetoric instead of sticking to facts and the truth has turned the entire domain of politics into a quagmire of rebuke, guile and brutality. This is precisely the reason why people do not wish to enter this critical sphere of managing human society. Is value based politics the answer to this problem? Or has it become another cliché?