Remaining almost unblemished for five years in its first avatar, the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-II appears to have acquired the status of being a government of scams with at least five of the Congress current and former ministers coming under a cloud. The growing list of “tainted” ministers includes Pawan Kumar Bansal (railways), Ashwani Kumar (law), Sriprakash Jaiswal (coal), Salman Khurshid (external affairs) and two dropped members of the Cabinet in Subodh Kant Sahai (tourism) and M.S. Gill (sports).
The long list of scams under the UPA-II started with the hosting of Commonwealth Games (CWG) and got bigger with faulty 2G-spectrum allocations, Adarsh Housing scam, chopper scam, Coalgate and now the railway appointment scam.
Besides ministers, even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could not escape the Opposition onslaught, as he was the minister in-charge of coal ministry when the blocks were allocated to private entities between November 2006 to May 2009.
This may be a coincidence, but two of the serving tainted ministers — Mr Bansal and Mr Kumar and one former minister Mr Gill — have direct or indirect connection with Punjab and Chandigarh. In political circles all the three Congress leaders are considered to be very close to the Prime Minister and were Dr Singh’s personal choice.
Even as Mr Bansal on Saturday tried to distance himself from his nephew, who was arrested by the CBI for allegedly taking bribe, it would be difficult for him to convince the Opposition, which is already on a rampage hitting the government hard. Since the Parliament is in session, Mr Bansal’s woes are only going to compound further. Similarly, the law minister is also in a soup, as even the Supreme Court had come down heavily on the CBI for sharing the Coalgate probe status report with him and officials of the PMO and coal ministry.
Last year, when Mr Khurshid was the Union law minister, he faced criticism for the alleged financial “fraud” committed by the Dr Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust, which is being run by him and his wife Louise Khurshid.
The CAG, in one of its reports, had asked the ministry of social justice to recover the grant of `71.5 lakhs along with an interest of `15.49 lakh from the Trust.
Coal minister Mr Jaiswal is also feeling the heat of ongoing probe into the Coalgate scam.
Mr Sahai, an MP from Ranchi, Jharkhand, had to lose his ministerial berth as his name had cropped up in a media expose regarding the controversial coal mine allotments. The expose claimed that Mr Sahai had recommended the allocation of a coal block in Jharkhand to a company in which his brother was a director.