Congress is synonymous with corruption

In the backdrop of a series of big ticket scams hitting the nation hard, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is waxing eloquent on matters of corruption.

While addressing the annual conference of the CBI and state anti-corruption agencies, the PM maintained that his Government is doing “everything possible” to ensure “probity”, “transparency” and “accountability”.

One can’t help thinking of the Prime Minister’s mounting number of platitudes regarding corruption as the devil preaching the  scripture. This came at a time when the Congress party and the UPA Government it leads are both neck-deep in corruption.

The most recent of the cases concerns Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Vadra has allegedly turned an initial amount of just Rs 50 lakh into a whopping Rs 300 crores in three years by means of inappropriate business transactions with realty giant DLF. In exchange, DLF reportedly received favours from Congress-led Governments in Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi.

But instead of ordering an investigation into the murky dealings, the Government is coming to the defence of Vadra. In fact, Finance Minister P Chidambaram clearly ruled out any probe into the issue while at the same time seeming to suggest that the Gandhi dynasty son-in-law was above the law!

Earlier in the month, the Government openly evaded questions on the expenditure incurred on Sonia Gandhi’s foreign trips. This was after after media reports suggested that a whopping Rs 1,880 crore had been spent from the public exchequer. Such is the nature of the Government’s efforts to ensure probity in public life. But that is not the end of this sad story.

A series of scams ranging from sectors like Coal mining to Power to Civil Aviation to 2G Spectrum to the  Commonwealth Games, and most recently a scam called Steelgate — add to an estimated loss of Rs 7,46,000 crore to the national exchequer. Each of the scams show a clearly visible imprint of the ruling Congress Government.

Apart from scams, the Congress-led UPA has other achievements to boast of as well. If one is to go by what Julian Paul Assange, editor of the whistleblower website Wikileaks has to say, India is the main source of black money.

The Congress-led Government never seems to show any interest in bringing back black money stashed away in overseas tax havens. Rather, it chooses to hide behind loopholes in international agreements to protect black money holders.

The story of the Congress and the saga of corruption in India go hand in hand. It was the Congress which spawned the culture of corruption in the country.

The nation can’t forget the Bofors gun payoff scandal which marked the beginning of corruption in India’s high places, thanks to the Congress. Later successive Congress Governments skillfully institutionalised corruption in the country. Now Congress’s corruption march has seems to have reached a whole new crescendo. It wouldn’t be wrong to conclude that rampant corruption is the most striking feature of UPA’s governance.

The Government has never dared to fight the menace of corruption. Rather it has allowed plunderers to loot the nation’s riches and then done everything in its power to shield them.

Considering Congress’s role in breeding corruption in the country, Prime Minister’s anti-corruption blabber seems little more than an awful joke. The Government is looking worse than ever