Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Congress leaders closing ranks around former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after he was summoned as an accused by a court in the coal blocks allocation case is not that it happened so quickly, but that it marks a significant departure from the tradition the party has nurtured over the last two decades.
The Congress may not like to remember it, but two of its topmost leaders in the recent past – former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and former party president Sitaram Kesri – were left in the lurch when they faced similar legal crises after demitting office.
Rao faced three cases of corruption after his reign as the prime minister ended in 1996 and the Congress was routed in the general elections that year. These included the St Kitts forgery case, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case and the Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case.
During the late 1990s, these cases evoked considerable public interest because, for the first time, a former prime minister was being prosecuted for offences he had allegedly committed while in office. But since Rao had been hounded out of the Congress soon after the 1996 polls, he was left to fend for himself. In the absence of any legal assistance from the party, he soon started facing financial troubles.
Distress sales
According to PVRK Prasad, an Indian Administrative Service officer who was the former prime minister's media advisor, Rao asked his friends to sell off his Banjara Hills house in Hyderabad to pay his legal fees just before his death in 2004.
The experience of Sitaram Kesri, who was the Congress president between 1996 and 1998, was no different from that of his predecessor. Just as Rao was hounded out by Kesri, the latter was removed by Sonia Gandhi and her supporters. Like Rao, Kesri too was fought his legal battles alone.
The defamation case pertained to a statement he made during the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 when he was still the party chief, accusing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of being involved in serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore in 1998 as the city was getting ready to receive Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani. Soon after the elections, Kesri was ousted by Sonia Gandhi, and after that he was on his own until his death in 2000.
Back then the Congress line was to let the law take its own course. Party insiders say even the change of this line in the case of Manmohan Singh has more to do with political exigencies than a feeling of comradeship. No matter what Congress leaders claim in public, it is the high command’s profit-and-loss consideration that has resulted in this unusual response.
Staying on message
Firstly, disowning the former Prime Minister would be tantamount to disowning 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance government’s rule. In addition, such a move would send out a message that Singh has a strained relationship with the party high command – a message that may give the BJP an opportunity to hit out at the Gandhi family for preventing room for anyone other than the Gandhi family at the top.
Secondly, the Congress leadership has taken a position that UPA government’s allocation of coal blocks (as well as 2G spectrum) was not a scam but a well-considered policy decision taken in the interests of the nation. As a result, the party cannot afford to be seen as dilly-dallying on the question of throwing its weight behind the man who headed the government during these years.
Of course, there's also the fact that Manmohan Singh, unlike PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, is still very much a Gandhi loyalist and is not regarded as hostile to the dynasty. In fact, if there’s one person the Gandhis would want on their side, it would be Singh, as he is possibly privy to a great deal of sensitive information.
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The Congress may not like to remember it, but two of its topmost leaders in the recent past – former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and former party president Sitaram Kesri – were left in the lurch when they faced similar legal crises after demitting office.
Rao faced three cases of corruption after his reign as the prime minister ended in 1996 and the Congress was routed in the general elections that year. These included the St Kitts forgery case, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case and the Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case.
During the late 1990s, these cases evoked considerable public interest because, for the first time, a former prime minister was being prosecuted for offences he had allegedly committed while in office. But since Rao had been hounded out of the Congress soon after the 1996 polls, he was left to fend for himself. In the absence of any legal assistance from the party, he soon started facing financial troubles.
Distress sales
According to PVRK Prasad, an Indian Administrative Service officer who was the former prime minister's media advisor, Rao asked his friends to sell off his Banjara Hills house in Hyderabad to pay his legal fees just before his death in 2004.
The experience of Sitaram Kesri, who was the Congress president between 1996 and 1998, was no different from that of his predecessor. Just as Rao was hounded out by Kesri, the latter was removed by Sonia Gandhi and her supporters. Like Rao, Kesri too was fought his legal battles alone.
The defamation case pertained to a statement he made during the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 when he was still the party chief, accusing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh of being involved in serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore in 1998 as the city was getting ready to receive Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani. Soon after the elections, Kesri was ousted by Sonia Gandhi, and after that he was on his own until his death in 2000.
Back then the Congress line was to let the law take its own course. Party insiders say even the change of this line in the case of Manmohan Singh has more to do with political exigencies than a feeling of comradeship. No matter what Congress leaders claim in public, it is the high command’s profit-and-loss consideration that has resulted in this unusual response.
Staying on message
Firstly, disowning the former Prime Minister would be tantamount to disowning 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance government’s rule. In addition, such a move would send out a message that Singh has a strained relationship with the party high command – a message that may give the BJP an opportunity to hit out at the Gandhi family for preventing room for anyone other than the Gandhi family at the top.
Secondly, the Congress leadership has taken a position that UPA government’s allocation of coal blocks (as well as 2G spectrum) was not a scam but a well-considered policy decision taken in the interests of the nation. As a result, the party cannot afford to be seen as dilly-dallying on the question of throwing its weight behind the man who headed the government during these years.
Of course, there's also the fact that Manmohan Singh, unlike PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, is still very much a Gandhi loyalist and is not regarded as hostile to the dynasty. In fact, if there’s one person the Gandhis would want on their side, it would be Singh, as he is possibly privy to a great deal of sensitive information.
