Just a transfer?

The sudden transfer of enforcement director M.K. Bezbaruah is bound to raise eyebrows. What causes suspicion is the timing of the decisio...

The sudden transfer of enforcement director M.K. Bezbaruah is bound to raise eyebrows. What causes suspicion is the timing of the decision and the reason the government has trotted out for it. It came immediately after the Central emissaries sent to Chennai sought to persuade AIADMK chief Jayalalitha not to precipitate a political crisis by withdrawing support to the Vajpayee government.

Since Bezbaruah had been instrumental in turning the Enforcement Directorate against the Tamil Nadu leader and some of her close confidants, who are accused of violating foreign exchange rules, the conjecture that the transfer was at her instance cannot be helped. More so when in the past the government had shown little hesitation in mollycoddling Jayalalitha even while resisting some of her demands like the dismissal of the Karunanidhi government. If this is indeed the case, it is a sad reflection on the state of affairs in the country.

As the official is from the IAS, the government is certainly within its rights totransfer him to a suitable post for administrative reasons. However, to claim, as Delhi Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma has done, that the services of such a senior officer was required to streamline transport services in the Capital is to evoke derision.

In the wake of Bezbaruah8217;s transfer, questions are bound to be asked about the fate of the cases that the directorate had been pursuing against Jayalalitha and some influential businessmen. Ordinarily such questions should not arise at all. In the system of governance that we follow, it is rules and regulations that matter more than the individuals entrusted with the task of enforcing them.

Seen against this backdrop, anyone who replaces Bezbaruah should be able to pursue the cases he initiated to their logical conclusion. By allowing this to happen, the government will be able to scotch the various speculations about the reasons that compelled it to transfer him. After all, when the chips are down it is the system and not the individual that is moreimportant. Nonetheless, politicisation of cases is a fact that cannot be denied. It is for this very reason that the ED cases had acquired unusual importance and Bezbaruah found himself in the limelight.

In an ideal situation excessive identification of individual officials with the cases they handle is counterproductive. The vigour with which a CBI official, U.N. Biswas, went about handling the fodder case in Bihar, even to the extent of seeking the Army8217;s help to arrest an accused person, may have earned him great mileage in terms of publicity but it did not serve the primary cause of bringing the guilty to book. A conscientious officer would quietly do his work in a painstaking manner while fighting shy of the arclight. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case as officials find the charms of media attention irresistible. Ultimately, it only helps the vested interests in power to clip their wings. But for the intervention of the courts, Bezbaruah and Biswas would have been holding sinecures a long timeago. Neither glamourisation of officials nor politicisation of cases is in the interest of good governance.