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| Prime Minister Manmohan Singh |
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose government has been roiled by a series of corruption scandals, yesterday urged the country’s top police agency to “act without fear or favour.”
Singh’s comments came as his Congress-led coalition reels from a slew of scandals, with his personal reputation on the line amid charges that he has allowed graft to go unchecked during his seven years in office.
The prime minister noted that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was investigating several high-profile cases of corruption that have attracted wide public attention.
“The handling of these cases constitutes a litmus test for you,” Singh said at the opening of a new CBI headquarters in New Delhi.
“What is expected of you is thorough investigation, fair action and quick results. The CBI should act without fear or favour and bring to book all those who are guilty, irrespective of their position or status,” he said.
“Whoever transgresses the law of the land, however mighty, has to be brought to book,” Singh said.
The prime minister also advised the CBI to avoid the media and concentrate on work. “I would advise you to put your heads down and work hard, away from the media glare, to ensure early resolution of these cases.”
He said it was important for the agency to ensure that its judgment was “rooted in hard evidence and is not influenced by extraneous factors.”
“Ours is an open and free society. There will be many views and opinions on all issues. The CBI has to be sensitive to these but it has always to do what is right and correct. For an investigating agency, there can be only one guiding beacon, only one gold standard and that is the law of the land.”
At the same time, Singh told the CBI not to engage in witch-hunts.
“There should be no vendetta, no witch-hunt and no harassment of the innocent,” he said.
Singh’s government is in the eye of a storm over allegations that telecom licences were sold at cut-rate prices in 2008 in exchange for kickbacks, depriving the treasury of as much as $40bn in revenues.
It faces a second high-profile graft scandal over last October’s Delhi Commonwealth Games. Last week the CBI arrested Suresh Kalmadi, a senior Congress lawmaker who was the top organiser of the $6bn Games, on corruption charges.
The CBI had earlier arrested Singh’s former telecoms minister A Raja, government officials and senior telecom company officials over the telecom scam.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) meanwhile accused Singh and then finance minister P Chidambaram of “direct complicity” in corruption in the telecom case.
The allegations came as the government and opposition clashed over the contents of a parliamentary committee report into the scandal.
“There was complete abdication of responsibility by the prime minister,” said senior BJP lawmaker Yashwant Sinha, a member of the Public Accounts Committee, in the most direct opposition attack yet on Singh.
“In India’s history there is no precedent of this kind. Nine out of 10 decisions taken by (then telecom minister) A Raja were with the knowledge of the prime minister,” Sinha told reporters.
A draft report sharply critical of the government was narrowly rejected by the PAC on which government supporters are in a slight majority.
The Congress has accused the BJP of seeking to “destabilise” the government.
The government fears the slew of controversies could lead to a repeat of the 1989 Bofors scandal when Congress was voted out of office over a gun deal involving associates of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who were accused of taking kickbacks.