Skirting the truth

The Congress Working Committee CWC seems to believe that it has struck a political goldmine in the Jain Commission report. This is clea...

The Congress Working Committee CWC seems to believe that it has struck a political goldmine in the Jain Commission report. This is clear from its approval of the final report of the commission while rejecting the government8217;s action taken report ATR. It speaks volumes for the party8217;s credulousness that it still lays great store by a commission which took seven long years to say that further inquiries are required to unravel the conspiracy behind Rajiv Gandhi8217;s assassination.

Since the commission was appointed by a Congress government and that too at the behest of the lady now heading the party, it could not have debunked it except at the cost of its own credibility. After all, it was on the issue of Justice M.C. Jain8217;s interim report that the party had brought down the I.K. Gujral government.

Thus it had no other option but to accept the report as if it was divinelyordained. In the bargain, the ATR became a convenient tool in the hands of the CWC. It finds fault with the BJP government8217;s decision to set up a multi-disciplinary monitoring agency in the CBI to follow up on the report. What the CWC objects to is the agency chosen to conduct further inquiries. It would like an independent 8212; probably judicial 8212; agency to do this job.

Having misused the CBI during its long tenure in office, the Congress is certainly aware of the inability of the agency to conduct an independent investigation if it is not in the government8217;s interest. Nevertheless, to blame the Congress alone for exploiting the Jain report may not be fair.

Even the government does not seem to have been above board when it prepared the ATR. If the findings of the commission were anything to go by, the best course open to the government would have been to debunk the whole report and get on with more important jobs. After all, the Special Investigating Team which inquired into the assassination had done a splendid job and all the 26 accused in the case now face the gallows. But such a course of action would not only have antagonised the principal opposition party but also precipitated a head-on collision between the BJP and the AIADMK.

To be fair to Jayalalitha, her party was the only one to contest the Lok Sabha election unambiguously asking for punishment of all those indicted8217; by the Jain Commission when even the Congress refrained from making it a campaign issue lest it send the wrong signals to the voters of Tamil Nadu. Since the BJP was its electoral ally, the former has no moral right to ignore the Jain report. Therefore, while trying to please the lady, it did a little politicking of its own by targeting M. Karunanidhi and Subramanian Swamy.

In the name of further inquiry the government will be able to turn the screws on them if the political situation so demands. But all this manoeuvring does not seem to have satisfied the Poes Garden lady who sees in the report a clear signal for the dismissal of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and the institution of criminal charges against him. The reaction of the Tamil Maanila Congress also suggests that all the anti-DMK forces see in the Jain report an opportunity to strike at the DMK. But in the excessive obsession about gaining something from the Jain report no party is prepared to state the obvious: that the report was an exercise in inanity.