Desperate Congress clutches SC straw on coal scam

On a day the opposition BJP sought President Pranab Mukherjee’s intervention against the incessant attacks on the CAG by the spokespersons of the UPA government and the Congress, there was some desperate relief for the ruling dispensation from the Supreme Court.

As it dismissed a PIL citing the CAG reports for various irregularities, a two judge bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices RM Lodha and AR Dave said: “CAG report will be examined by the public accounts committee and then debated in Parliament. One cannot reach final conclusion on the basis of the CAG report.”

That this mandatory proviso repeated ad nauseam by the party with little effect on the public discourse has been echoed by the apex court came as big relief to the beleagured Congress that has been fighting a losing battle of perception. “This is what we have been saying right from the beginning, and the BJP that has disrupted an entire session of Parliament should now pay heed to it,” Congress spokesperson Rashid Alvi said.

However, with a spate of disclosures from CBI investigations, involving Congress MPs like Vijay Darda, Naveen Jindal, and former minister Santosh Bagrodia, the Congress had no option but to make a feeble attempt to portray these embarrassing revelations as a sign of the CBI’s independence. “Now this should convince our critics that the CBI is not being used by us,” he said.

In the context of the BJP’s complaint to the President, Alvi went on the back-foot and claimed that his party has never attacked the institution of the CAG. “Unlike the NDA ministers who described the CAG as ‘idiotic’ and ‘unethical’ we have never attacked the institution of the CAG. We have only observed that the CAG should not be stepping into the domain of policymaking, and the task of computing notional losses to the exchequer,” he observed while referring to critical comments against the CAG by the then NDA ministers Arun Shourie and George Fernandes.