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A futile exercise

That the Lok Sabha Committee exonerated the main players implicated in the so-called ‘cash-for-votes scam’ is hardly surprising. But the findings of the panel, headed by the Congress party’s Kishore Chandra Deo, will do nothing but breed further cynicism about the nature of such exercises and about their commitment to unearthing the truth. A parliamentary probe was ordered into the issue after three Bharatiya Janata Party MPs alleged they were bribed to help save the United Progressive Alliance government in the trust vote in July this year. It would have been too much to expect the panel to arrive at any conclusion that could cause serious political discomfiture to the Congress or its new-found friend, the Samajwadi Party, particularly with a general election just months away. It is nobody’s case that the allegations against Congress leader Ahmed Patel or Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh — who were accused of having been part of the bribe-giving conspiracy — were credible, leave alone incontrovertible. But the panel’s findings, in which some were exonerated and others recommended for further investigation, do not inspire much confidence given the procedures under which it operated. While those who claimed they were paid bribes for votes were hauled before the panel, Mr. Patel and Mr. Singh did not even appear before it because of a rule that prohibits Rajya Sabha MPs from being called by a Lok Sabha inquiry committee.

In describing the SP’s Sanjeev Saxena as a bribe-giver, the panel was only going by the transcripts of videotapes, which showed him handing over a wad of cash to the MPs. On the principal question of the entire scandal — the source of this money — the panel concluded that it could not be established. Two others recommended for further investigation are connected with the BJP and are alleged to have either masterminded or helped set up the sting operation on the sordid incident. While their actions raise serious ethical issues, the parliamentary panel seems to have been more concerned with their role than with the part played by the alleged bribe-givers. Parliamentary committees, in which members of the ruling party or combine are in a majority, are hardly the ideal mechanism to investigate charges of corruption against MPs. More often than not, they are so influenced by political considerations that they end up being no more than instruments to fix one person or absolve another. It would have been far better to have turned over the entire cash-for-votes scandal to an investigating agency rather than having — at the end of many depositions and sittings — a report that says so little and is less than convincing.

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