Eknath Khadse, Maharashtra cabinet minister holding 10 portfolios and dogged by allegations of corruption and misuse of office, finally resigned on June 4. The Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons claimed – as is their wont – his resignation to be yet another evidence of the high moral principles that the party practices in public life.
But, in effect, Khadse, a party veteran of 40 years and till recently a chief ministerial aspirant, has become the sacrificial lamb for the party. He will now be the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "Naa khaoonga, naa khaane doonga (I will neither take nor let anyone take a bribe)" at work, as it were.
The series of allegations against the minister – especially the under-valued land deal in Bhosari involving his wife and son-in-law made in April this year – were grave and indefensible enough for the party president Amit Shah to demand his resignation.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis later announced that a retired high court judge would conduct an inquiry into the allegations. The effort at all levels was to send out the message that faced with corruption charges in high places, this government acted in a decisive and stern manner to get a top-ranking minister to put in his papers, in stark contrast to the previous Congress government which shielded its ministers accused of corruption. It is a different matter that Khadse’s ouster from the cabinet most helps Fadnavis, given the recent frostiness between them.
Virtue out of a necessity
But there's a problem. Even as the moral-high-ground drum was being beaten all around, the party appeared to back Khadse and claimed he was wrongly targeted. Defiant at the state of affairs, hurt and betrayed by the fact that the party he had helped build in Maharashtra from scratch had unceremoniously junked him, Khadse complained of “a media trial”. And seated right next to him was the BJP Maharashtra president Raosaheb Danve who declared that Khadse had done nothing wrong and “the allegations were all a part of the conspiracy to malign the party’s image”.
The four major allegations of corruption and misuse of office, impropriety and conflict of interest, irregularities and questions about the calls he purportedly received from the underworld fugitive Dawood Ibrahim’s wife are, without doubt, serious enough to warrant investigation.
It must be galling for the party – and for Khadse – who relentlessly embarrassed the previous Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government with exposes in the multi-crore irrigation scam in the state Assembly and outside it till 2014 to be in the dock now. The Congress demanded the arrest of Khadse and a CBI probe into all charges against him.
The cake: to have or to eat?
But did the BJP dump Khadse or back him? It attempted to do both, simultaneously so.
Given that Prime Minister Modi’s claim of providing a corruption-free government is fast turning into a mildly amusing joke, the party had to show that it meant business. Khadse happened to be the right man at the right time in the right place – significant in Maharashtra but not a major national politician, an Other Backward Caste leader not greatly loved by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a mass leader who could challenge the Delhi diktats unlike Fadnavis who is keen to keep the Modi-Shah duo in good humour. Khadse was dispensable in a way that other high-profile BJP leaders accused of wrong-doing and misuse of office so far were not.
The allegations against union minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in the Lalit Modi issue were grave as well. The shadow of suspicion continues to haunt Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the Vyapam scandal and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh’s family in the Agusta Westland scam. Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani’s educational qualifications have been challenged in court and the case is underway. In Maharashtra itself, two other cabinet ministers have been under a cloud – Pankaja Munde in the chikki (a sweet snack) procurement scam and Vinod Tawde for irregularities in his educational certificates.
The BJP leadership brazened out these accusations, its excuses and justifications often flying in the face of reason, but none of these leaders were forced to step down in the interest of maintaining the high moral ground. Why a different yardstick was used in Khadse’s case is the question being raised within the party, especially in Maharashtra. Perhaps because the rest were allowed to keep their offices, he had to be asked to step down so that the party’s claim of a non-corrupt government would not sound hollow.
Already, a section of BJP workers in his home-district Jalgaon forced shops to shut down as his resignation was accepted, and let it be known that their loyalties lay with him and not with the party. An irate and hurt Khadse is bad news for the BJP heading into local elections but the leadership hopes to pacify him in some way.
Therefore, BJP state president Danve showed public support to the man who was marched out of the state cabinet only hours before. The party needs Khadse, the organiser, the campaigner, the mass leader, the rural face. But Khadse, the minister who allegedly misused his office and damaged Modi’s calling card – corruption-free government – had to be shown the door.
This is a classic case of the BJP leadership wanting to eat its cake and have it too – never an astute political strategy.