Due diligence

That the Padma awards have had a long and complex history in this country is a matter of public record. The very concept of having such awards has been attacked in the past; and the courts have been called in to rule on their constitutionality,too. But they are now part of the fabric of our public life which makes it even more unacceptable that,every year,their announcement is accompanied by some sort of controversy. Last year it was the Padma Shri for Hashmatullah Khan,a 55-year-old Kashmiri Kani shawl promoter and entrepreneur. This year it is the Padma Bhushan thats been handed out to non-resident Indian hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal.

Hashmatullahs case eventually sorted itself out,largely: it had originally appeared to be the case that no shawl craftsman of that name existed. Then the exporter was unearthed,Kashmir CM Omar Abdullah vouched for his contribution to the shawl trade,and life went on. But the Chatwal problem runs deeper. His problematic past which has caused him to be the focus of several enquiries from the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI and the fact that he is deeply embedded in United States politics led to closer-than-normal scrutiny of his antecedents. And what that scrutiny has turned up isnt pretty. As this newspaper detailed on Saturday,the governments claims that there is nothing adverse on record against Chatwal are markedly less reassuring when it is known that the CBI went as far as to send a team to the US to chase him down and actually got him put behind bars only to be called off the hunt by two successive CBI directors.

The dependence of the CBI on political direction is a continuing scandal. If it were known that it was a truly independent agency,then a decision to not pursue an investigation of this sort would not be a problem in most eyes. However,this is clearly not the case. We are left with the fact that the government simply did not perform the due diligence required to ensure that this high-profile nominee for one of Indias most major awards actually made the cut. This is in spite of a process that is supposed to weed out much trouble: the original set of nominations are vetted by a high-powered awards committee that includes the cabinet and home secretaries as well as subject experts. After that,security agencies are supposed to sign off on every individual. But emptily going through the processes isnt enough. The awards are given on behalf of the nation. The choices must adhere to a higher code.