Opinion Out of My Mind: A serious lapse

The CWG scam broke because the British tax authorities questioned a VAT reclaim by the event management company in London which staged the handing over of the flame to India. We would never have discovered this had we relied on Indian media. The Sunday Times has been pursuing MPs in general about likely misconduct. They zeroed in on Keith Vaz which broke the scandal. The issue had no India connections as such. The question was whether Vaz had a conflict of interest in as much as he was seeking a favour (travel document from the UK government) from the head of the UK Border Agency while about to question her in his capacity as Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. The Parliamentary Commissioner on Public Conduct will investigate this as a complaint that has been registered about Vaz’s conduct. There the matter should have rested.

But meanwhile in India, the media were in a feeding frenzy off the morsels offered by The Sunday Times. The reason was Lalit Modi being the person for whom Vaz had intervened. Lalit Modi’s passport had then been confiscated. He has been happily in exile in London. To leave the UK, he needed a travel document, a temporary piece of paper which allows stateless people to travel out and return to the UK. Vaz was arguing for a travel document for Modi saying that he had to go to Portugal as his wife needed a cancer check-up.

The only role Sushma Swaraj had was in stating that India had no objection if the UK gave travel documents to Lalit Modi. She is reported to have called Sir James Bevan and told him so. It seems a straightforward decision on compassionate grounds. The action was being taken by the UK. India was just acquiescing by not objecting.

Alas, nothing is straightforward in Indian politics, especially on the eve of a new session of Parliament. Every possible angle has now been brought in — Sushma Swaraj’s husband and daughter and nephew, Lalit Modi’s partying in Ibiza, photos involving Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj, Amit Shah and a cast of several others. None of this pertains to the central issue, which is whether there was any conflict of interest in not objecting to the decision of the UK granting the travel document to Lalit Modi.

The alternative to ‘No Objection’ would be to say that India did not want the UK to grant the travel permit to Lalit Modi. If his need to accompany his wife to a hospital in Portugal was genuine, as one must assume prima facie, then to disallow the UK from issuing travel permit would sound harsh. That could entail discussion with Cabinet colleagues.

The serious lapse of governance is that there seems to be no established procedure to investigate conflict of interest on the part of ministers as there is in the UK. This lacuna needs to be filled. The Prime Minister has a golden opportunity to lay down a marker for good governance and institute such a procedure. The Congress never did that, let Modi show the way.