The Judeo-Jogi affair has not ended with the Chhattisgarh election. In the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls next year, the Congress and the BJP are both using it to score points against each other. The Congress has demanded that the probe against Dilip Singh Judeo should be conducted by a joint parliamentary committee, not by the CBI. Many are perturbed by the fact that the government moved with such alacrity in registering an FIR against Ajit Jogi and his son Amit but did not register one against Judeo, who was caught taking money on camera in a sting operation. Frankly speaking, the choice is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The CBI may be the country’s premier investigating agency, and the prime minister may have chastised the opposition for making it a whipping boy, but the harsh truth is that it no longer commands the kind of confidence it used to. Since the mid-nineties it has been used by successive regimes to play the politics of investigation. The only redeeming feature about the CBI — and this was pointed out by the PM — is that the CVC will monitor its functioning when it probes a corruption case. A JPC is, however, hardly a better option. It too is a discredited instrument. Whether it was the JPC looking into Bofors or into the Harshad Mehta securities scam, or the more recent one inquiring into alleged stockmarket manipulations, JPCs have not zeroed in on the big fish. Referring an allegation to a JPC is, in fact, the best way to defuse a controversy. A JPC takes months, sometimes years, to complete its investigations and by the time it comes out with its report, people are likely to have even forgotten what it was set up to probe. The country needs an investigating agency which works independent of the government. Politicians argue that there can be trouble if a maverick ends up heading such an institution. These fears are misplaced. In any case, the risk is worth taking. T.N. Seshan was a maverick, but he made the Election Commission truly independent of the government and his successors have had to live up to that image. The merits or demerits of the JPC\CBI apart, the PM’s defence that people still had faith in Judeo as the BJP had been voted to power in Chhattisgarh is disturbing. First of all, it was hardly a mandate on Judeo’s integrity. It is not as if the election was fought on whether or not Judeo was corrupt. The fact is that the “cash on camera” controversy did not become an electoral issue of the kind the Congress expected it to because Jogi’s own image was so muddied. This does not mean that people condoned what Judeo did. It may only indicate that people had little to choose between. Besides, there were other factors that led to the BJP’s victory. The NCP ensured the defeat of the Congress in a large number of constituencies. The Congress did so badly in the tribal belt because of the RSS’s work amongst the tribals over the years. The BJP emerged victorious in 76 out of 99 seats reserved for the Scheduled Tribes in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Unlike last time, the RSS cadres came out in full force to campaign for the BJP, and the behind the scenes mediation by people like Pyarelal Khandelwal and Sanjay Joshi contributed to the victory as much as the election management of Pramod Mahajan and Arun Jaitley. If the people’s mandate argument is taken to its logical conclusion, then winning an election could negate any offence and would, in effect, endorse the criminalisation of politics. This would actually make a case for letting off all those with a criminal record who successfully manage to contest elections. In any case, elections are not a one-time phenomenon. Indira Gandhi may have lost in 1977 because of excesses during the Emergency but her victory in 1980 cannot be seen as a justification of the Emergency and what she did during 1977-79. A last word about Jogi’s letter to the governor, extending support to a breakaway group of BJP MLAs. Forget for a moment the alleged offer of bribes to break the BJP. Every party has tried to break another group to form a government at some time or the other, and they have offered material incentives to legislators, whether or not they have been caught. But to do it a day after the poll outcome was not only foolish — and this showed Jogi’s desperation — but it was highly undemocratic. It would have rendered the election process meaningless. The Jogi-Judeo affair has underlined trends which weaken our democracy. But hopefully, leaders may now be wary of any attempts to buy and sell legislators, to break and regroup parties, lest they be trapped in a sting operation. If that happens, there may be a silver lining to the dark clouds after all.
