Interminably interim

Finally, it is curtains for the one-man enquiry commission which had degenerated into a one-man conspiracy to hang on to a cushy job. Six years after he was asked to investigate the criminal conspiracy that led to Rajiv Gandhi8217;s assassination, Justice M. C. Jain had managed to produce only an interim report. This widely derided document contains almost no material of legal consequence. Its 13-volume bulk is largely composed of minutes of hearings and correspondence with deponents that are of no abiding value, expositions on VIP security procedures that ought never to have been made public and a complete hagiography of Rajiv Gandhi. The report found use only as a political weapon used by the Congress to bring down the United Front government. In the election that is just over, it also served as a rationale for Sonia Gandhi8217;s entry into active politics. It supplied her with a convenient manifesto and her speechwriters with an excuse to use soul-stirring, blood-boltered imagery.

No one is going to miss theJain Commission. Given its performance levels over the last half-decade, there is no reason to believe that it was going to deliver anytime soon. And given the contents of the Interim Report, it certainly would have been in no position to name the guilty. In fact, these persons have been sentenced in the Poonamallee trial in the meantime, without the benefit of Justice Jain8217;s vast expertise on the conspiracy. In a happy coincidence, the commission8217;s tenure ran out on the last day of polling, allowing the government to wind it up without infringing on the model code of conduct. Already an enquiry has been initiated into how the Press was privy to the contents of the Interim Report before it was tabled in Parliament. It would also be useful to know on what grounds Justice Jain concluded that every man, woman and child in Tamil Nadu had terrorist sympathies.

Justice Jain has displayed a most alarming facility for staying in office without being noticeably productive. He has indiscriminately called people todepose before him. Anyone who claimed to have any information pertaining to the assassination, however suspect, could count on getting his ear. At one point of time, he even wanted to summon Yasser Arafat, a feat that is yet to be performed by any government in the world. He has investigated so pointlessly, at such ridiculous lengths, that what initially appeared to be his enthusiasm was revealed for what it was: a dilatory tactic. The nation is heartily sick of the useless information that the Commission has generated and will welcome its termination. Only one threat remains now. In anticipation of a Congress-UF coalition coming to power, I.K. Gujral has allegedly been told to go easy on Romesh Bhandari. By the same logic, he cannot investigate the leaking of the Jain Commission report. And if the Congress does indeed share power in the next government, Justice Jain may well be rehabilitated. Having used his report to bring down a government and write a manifesto, the least the Congress can do for him is togrant a sinecure in perpetuity.