Edit, Governance Now, March 16,31, 2011
You must explain what led to the error and heads must roll to account for the serious lapses
When the prime minister first said in Jammu that it was an “error of judgment” and that he took “full responsibility” for appointing PJ Thomas as the central vigilance commissioner, which the supreme court set aside as “illegal”, it seemed a genuinely contrite expression. Given his reputation for personal integrity, many looked forward to his subsequent statement in parliament to find out what steps he intended to take to fortify such appointments in future. The BJP’s suggestion was loaded: “The PM should introspect on whether he was misled or allowed himself to be misled.” But when he made his statement in Lok Sabha a few days later, doubts crept in. His statement was a mere record of the timeline with a tag, “we accept and respect the verdict”. Expressions of error of judgment and taking full responsibility for it were missing. When the leader of opposition, Sushma Swaraj, protested, the prime minister said: “I have no hesitation in repeating what I said in Jammu. Obviously, there was an error of judgment. I accept full responsibility for it.”
Swaraj may have been satisfied with that but we, the people of India, are not. We demand some answers and remedial measures given the fact that it involved appointment of the head of the topmost corruption watchdog in the country. Firstly, this is not about your personal integrity, Mr Prime Minister. It is about institutional integrity, the integrity of the office of the prime minister. Thomas’ appointment was cleared by a panel headed by the prime minister. Second, you must explain the omissions and as well as the commissions in the selection process. And third, fix the responsibility. Who is or are responsible for the apparent lapses? Why heads haven’t rolled, then or now? Until we have answers to these questions, the institutional integrity of the prime minister will remain suspect, and so would the mea culpa.
That is so because Thomas’ selection was a brazen act. Not only did the panel know about the pending criminal case against him, Swaraj, who was a panel member along with home minister P Chidambaram, was overruled when she objected to his candidature on this very ground. Both the prime minister and the home minister have confirmed this since then. Swaraj has gone on record to say that she tried to postpone the decision “by a day” when she was told that Thomas had been “acquitted”. This was not conceded. She tried to approach the president but by the time she got an appointment, Thomas had been sworn in. It remains a mystery as to why Swaraj’s red flag didn’t alert the PM and why a background check was not initiated thereafter. The extraordinary haste with which the government moved doesn’t reflect the circumspection such sensitive appointments call for.
Selection and swearing-in of Thomas happened in the first week of September 2010. The PIL in the apex court came later. The same brazenness was evident in the government’s dealing with the issue in courts too. The affidavits filed by the government first certified Thomas’ impeccable integrity and then questioned the court’s jurisdiction in questioning governme-nt’s action. When these didn’t work,
the court was told that the PM-led panel had no knowledge of the criminal case against Thomas.
It is difficult to believe that for five months the PM was being misled into believing something contrary to what the court was commenting from time to time and what incessant and widespread media coverage was screaming about l’affaire Thomas. At the end of the day, the court said it wasn’t only a pending criminal charge sheet, the prosecution sanction on which had been pending for years, but that there were nearly half-dozen file notings seeking disciplinary proceedings against Thomas and even a CVC note seeking his punishment.
Assuming for a moment that the PM was indeed being misled, what is stopping him now from acting against those who did so? Why is he being seen to be protecting those at fault? His silence only reinforces the idea that he chose to be deliberately misled, which, then, raises a question about his personal integrity!
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