Reflections on one year of UPA rule

Take the appointment of Navin Chawla as Election Commissioner. He may be an efficient officer. But he carries the taint of atrocities committed during the Emergency. His name is spread all over the report of the Shah Commission which went into the excesses. That Chawla is close to the dynasty -- he was Sanjay Gandhi's Man Friday -- is all the more objectionable because, by sheer seniority, Chawla will be the Chief Election Commissioner in 2009 when the general election is due. In his farewell remark, the outgoing

Chief Election Commissioner Krishnamurthy woefully said that he feared poiticisation of the commission. Maybe, he had Chawla's selection in mind.

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I do not see any difference between Chawla's appointment by the Congress and that of Sharma by the BJP as member of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Chawla has been rewarded for his proximity to the dynasty and Sharma for his assistance to former Home Minister L.K. Advani to untangle himself from the charges in the Babri masjid demolition case. Chawla was nearly appointed Home Secretary, but kept back intentionally because he had only a few months left in service. As Election Commissioner he gets five years. For Sharma, the vacancy in NHRC was kept unfilled for six months till he retired from CBI directorship. His tenure is for six years.

Again, political considerations seem to have weighed with Manmohan Singh when his government decided not to accept the Phukan Commission's exoneration of former Defence Minister George Fernandes from allegations of corruption in defence deals. No doubt, Fernandes wrongly allowed Justice Phukan and his wife to go on a junket using a defence aircraft. But this is an act of indiscretion for which Fernandes can be asked to pay. But this cannot be the basis for rejecting the report which is categorical in its pronouncement.

Justice Phukan says in his report that after examining the records of each of the past transactions and the evidence, both oral and documentary, "it has found that there was no illegality or irregularity" in the 15 defence transactions referred to the commission. The government did not want to make the report public. It was the Lok Sabha Speaker who directed the government to lay it on the table of the house.

Strange, Manmohan Singh should have agreed to hold back the release the Nanavati Commission report on the 1984 riots. Even after 21 years of riots in which 3,000 Sikhs were killed on a single day in Delhi alone, the government is not willing to face the truth, only a part of which has come out. Is it because the Congress government was in power then? If wounds have not healed for more than two decades, the delay of a few more months will not matter.

I have talked to Justice Nanavati after he submitted the report. He had no words to describe the tragedy.

He said that the murder and rapine were deliberate, planned and fomented by certain Congress leaders. The party may have a problem of dealing with those named in the report, but the question that the party should ask itself is: should such people be permitted to stay in the Congress?

Politics of convenience is not the word which I associate with Manmohan Singh. Why didn't he put his foot down and dismiss all pleas against the release of the report? As a member of the Rajya Sabha, I have watched his performance for six years. I could never imagine that if he were ever at the helm of affairs, he would let petty party considerations prevail over what was legally and morally right.

What should I make out from what has happened in Bihar on the eve of his completing one-year rule? The Prime Minister announces one day amidst applause that the bane of the administration is the frequent transfer of district magistrates and superintendents of police. But within 24 hours, Bihar Governor Buta Singh, the centre's instrument of power, sends on leave two district magistrates, who had challenged Shahabuddin and the second Sadhu Yadav, the known tainted persons.

Politically placed as Bihar was, there was probably no escape from another election. But it is obvious that the exercise began when Ram Vilas Paswan's men started moving towards Nitish Kumar, an important functionary in the BJP-led NDA. The governor should have gone over the exercise of inviting different political parties to assess their strength before recommending the assembly dissolution. The centre has betrayed unnecessary haste.

It hardly matters that the Left kept away from the UPA celebrations of the one-year rule. The Left cannot thus wash its hands off the responsibility for the failures of the government. After all, the Left is part of the UPA apex body, presided over by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The Left is also privy to common minimum programme (CMP) and joins in the occasional exercises carried out to assess what went wrong and why.

By openly expressing unhappiness over the government's lack of performance, the Left leadership may placate the cadres but not people. Even the rare threat that the Congress cannot take the Left for granted has become a cliché

. My worry is that the Left is beginning to enjoy the limelight it gets because of the association with the government. Comrades are being taken in by the "importance" both Manmohan Singh and Sonia is giving them. The Prime Minister calls them for breakfast and reportedly takes them into confidence. Sonia is inviting them to her residence and often agreeing to their point of view. Has the Left assessed the government performance in terms of the common man's lot?

The cost of living is going up practically every week. Weavers, cobblers, ironsmiths or people of similar professions have been without job for months. The unorganised labour, whose amelioration is included in the CMP, is only having a dose after dose of promises. And there is no well thought out programme to provide drinking water.

Probably, one year is too short a period for the results to fructify. The Left could have at least ensured that the Congress doesn't hijack key appointments. See the appointment of governors. Manmohan Singh has shown no less nepotism than the Atal Behari Vjapyee's government. But I am told that the comrades have also recommended the name of their "men" to positions in the government and its committees. I never imagined that the Left would become a part of the furniture so soon.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.