Accountability needed, not theatrics

THE PRIME MINISTER, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's dramatic offer to step down, made at a meeting of the BJP Parliamentary party, would appear to have been provoked by a sense of pique at the sharp criticism of the role of his office in the UTI muddle from within his own party and from the coalition partners, with aspersions being cast on the role of his aides. He was presumably stung to the quick because the names of his confidants were brought in. Although the BJP Executive Committee has, in its resolution, spoken generally of a nexus between the corporate sector and the financial institutions, the tone and tenor of the deliberations at the meeting were, by all accounts, stridently focussed against the Government on the UTI issue to the extent that the Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani, was prompted to call for the party to ``shed its Opposition mindset''. The `revelations' a member of the characteristically non-conformist NDA partner, the Shiv Sena, made in Parliament suggesting an unholy link between certain high-ranking officials in the PMO and the former UTI chief, Mr. P. S. Subramanyam (now facing investigation by the CBI on criminal charges), have indeed brought the high office under a cloud.

At one level, of course, the virtual collapse of the UTI's flagship scheme, US-64, adversely affecting the interests of 20 million small investors is traced to the conceptual flaws inherent in its framework which experts want to be removed so that the scheme itself is run as any other mutual fund and on well-established principles. But the more disturbing dimension consists in the dubious ways in which the scheme has been managed, as evidenced by the murky details being thrown up by the criminal investigations now under way and by other sources. Considering that a somewhat similar crisis had overtaken the US- 64 scheme only in 1998 forcing the Centre to pump in Rs. 3,300 crores in a bailout operation to restore investors' confidence, it is inevitable that the Union Finance Ministry should be blamed for not having drawn the right lesson and devised a credible monitoring mechanism. The most pernicious of all - and the one that is damaging to the political establishment at the Centre - is of course the suspected link of the higher-ups with the questionable investment decisions of the UTI management. It has been alleged that many of the bad investments were made under pressure from ``top officials'' and power brokers in Delhi. While these are still accusations and yet to be proved, the point that they have raised serious doubts about the role of certain ``higher-ups'' cannot be dismissed peremptorily. To the extent that an accusing finger has been pointed at the PMO, for having ``influenced'' the UTI's dubious investment decisions, the Prime Minister has some explaining to do.

Given the context in which Mr. Vajpayee has come up with his ``resignation'' offer, it may well be no more than a shock of the type political leaders at the helm are known to administer whenever they come under pressure from within their parties. In his case, it is evidently directed against the coalition over which he is presiding; reports suggest that he wanted to quit office in view of his ``inability'' to have the NDA function in a ``coherent and disciplined manner''. And the chances are that the shock treatment would have its desired effect, with the NDA, called to meet today, expressing full confidence in his leadership and pledging unstinted support to him. In any event, such a display of theatrics does not certainly behove the head of a responsible government whose top functionaries have come under a cloud and the ``resignation'' option, which betrays an escapist urge, will leave unanswered the host of hard questions the UTI muddle has raised. The cardinal principle of accountability demands that the Vajpayee regime come clean on the murky affair in all respects, after a thorough and independent inquiry.

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Section  : Opinion
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