The Hindu : Sack Ram Naik: CPI(M)

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 08, 2002

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Sack Ram Naik: CPI(M)

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI AUG. 7. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today demanded the dismissal of the Petroleum Minister, Ram Naik, in the wake of the petrol and gas agencies scandal and said the gravity of charges of gross corruption against the Vajpayee Government had been increasing in successive sessions of Parliament.

The party argued that by announcing the cancellation, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had admitted that his Government was guilty. "Once there is an admission of guilt, what must follow is action against the guilty. But for a party and a Government that has long ceased to have anything to do with honour and decency, such a course is unthinkable. For a Government that has shamelessly re-inducted the Defence Minister, George Fernandes, even while the enquiry into the charges of large-scale corruption exposed by Tehelka.com is underway, it would be assuming too much to expect that it would ask for Ram Naik's resignation,'' an editorial in the latest issue of CPI(M) party organ, People's Democracy, said.

It said Mr. Naik should be sacked since he was the "presiding deity" of the Ministry that doled out favours to the near and dear of the BJP in a brazen manner. One of the beneficiaries was an inmate of the Prime Minister's official residence in Lucknow, the editorial said.

It said while the Prime Minister might have been forced to cancel the dealerships, former Justice Kuldip Singh who delivered the judgment on the abuse of discretionary quotas had publicly stated that in the background of that judgment, anyone who would file a public interest litigation would force the court to cancel these allotments. It said the Prime Minister's decision, therefore, also seemed to be prompted by the fact that the Government did not want the judiciary to rap its knuckles.

On the BJP's claim of being not just a party but a Government with a difference, it said: "Difference indeed, it has. This just every Government in independent India has turned out to be the most unscrupulously corrupt one that India has ever had''.

The editorial observed that to maintain decorum and political morality, the Government should have quit long ago. "The list of corruption scams under this Government puts the country to shame. Yet, this Government continues to cling on to the office unmindful of the sleaze and immorality that it patronised.''

It said the NDA allies should realise at least now that the BJP was pursuing its communal agenda as vigorously as it was "indulging in corruption". The allies who used the fig leaf of making corruption the central issue in the current political scenario for their support to the BJP have absolutely no justification for continuing their support, particularly, after the petrol pump scam exposure.

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