New twist no cover for murky deals

By Harish Khare

NEW DELHI, AUG. 23. The Defence Ministry says it did not leak the ``damaging'' portions of the Tehelka tapes. The Venkataswami Commission says it cannot be the source of the leakage. And, surely, the Tehelka crowd itself cannot be suspected of leaking out the embarrassing material. The needle of suspicion has to be on those who have sought to derive political benefit out of this latest round of ``disclosure''.

Notwithstanding the Samata Party's rather exaggerated display of indignation over the ``immoral'' means used by the Tehelka crew, the revised controversy is not going to do any political good to the Vajpayee Government. The National Democratic Alliance coalition no longer enjoys the kind of political credibility that it can convince the country to overlook the enormity of the defence officers' susceptibility to actual or potential honey- traps. One has to suspect that the idea in raising the hullabaloo over the ``unethical means'' seems to be to bring about a ministerial rehabilitation of Mr. George Fernandes. That happy denouement cannot come about so easily.

To begin with, the Prime Minister simply cannot restore to Mr. Fernandes his old job of Defence Minister till the Venkataswami Commission delivers its verdict. A Commission of Inquiry does not become redundant just because a portion of the evidential material before it can be said to be morally indefensible. Unless the Venkataswami Commission totally exonerates the Ministry of Defence from the charge of bribe- taking in arms purchasing, there can be no relief for Mr. Fernandes.

The Tehelka expose acquired a potency not because a handful of Army officers were seen on the television screen to be on the take; the expose got its sharp edge from the image of the president of the ruling party accepting a wad of currency notes, without the slightest of inhibitions or apology. That was the moment when the BJP depleted all its accumulated political capital of being a ``party with a difference''.

And, if that defining image of Mr. Bangaru Laxman was not damaging enough, there were those disquieting scenes of the Samata Party president sitting in the Defence Minister's official residence with those posing as arms dealers. Money exchanges hands, and a promise is made of a helpful intervention by the ``sahib''. It was this image of deals being struck in the Defence Minister's residence that did the maximum damage.

These revealing moments of disgrace do not get obliterated simply because the latest round of disclosure shows that the Tehelka crew possibly crossed the ethical divide. Nor does this ``going too far'' charge against the Tehelka portal dilute the moral indifference that was implied in the original argument made by the NDA crowd: the bribe money was accepted by the political leaders for ``party purposes''. This line of defence disgusted the BJP middle class constituency which somehow believed that the Vajpayee-Advani leadership would be different than the previous dispensations that ruled in New Delhi.

A section of the Samata leadership has demanded that ``action'' be taken against the Tehelka portal. Rites of partisanship have enjoined the BJP back-benchers to be seen as humouring the Fernandes-Jaya Jaitly duo on this count. But the Prime Minister and the others in the BJP leadership cannot allow themselves to lose sight of the larger picture of malfeasance and moral indifference, painted so vividly by the Tehelka expose. The Vajpayee regime cannot afford any further accretion to its moral deficiency account.

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