In a recent blog, I posed the question: Is the PM losing control over his Cabinet? That was in the context of recent bouts of mild defiance, if you will, by ministers such as Shashi Tharoor on the use of Twitter, and Jairam Ramesh over climate change policy.
What has emerged is a lot worse. If a
report in the Pioneer daily (whose Editor Chandan Mitra is a BJP MP) is true, Telecom Minister A Raja, a DMK MP, defied instructions from Manmohan Singh asking him not to make the controversial 2G spectrum allotments without the approval of the prime minister.
“I would request you to give urgent consideration to the issues being raised with a view to ensuring fairness and transparency and let me know of the position before you take any further action in this regard,” Singh reportedly wrote in the letter dated Nov. 2, 2007.
In the two-page letter, Singh also objected to Raja’s proposal to go ahead with the first-come-first-served model and cheap pricing and instructed the minister to adopt “correct pricing of spectrum and revision of entry fee,” the Pioneer said.
Estimates of loss to the national exchequer on account of the allotments under unjustifiable rules run up to Rs 60,000 crore, about $13 billion. Essentially, the telecom ministry went ahead and awarded the spectrum at sharply lower rates; many of these companies then resold them to other partners for huge profit.
Over the past weeks, pressure has been building up on Raja. Calls for his resignation have been come from several opposition leaders. Some others have sought an investigation. Nothing has happened. Even Pioneer’s revelation of the absolute defiance of the PM by Raja has failed to create so much as a flutter.
This obviously stems from the lack of a strong opposition. The BJP has cried foul, rightfully calling into question the reputation of the PM as “Mr Clean.” But its decline has been marked, especially since the recent Lok Sabha elections. Over the years, it also has lost credibility when attacking the prime minister. Remember the overarching theme: “the weakest prime minister India has ever had.”
Consequently, now when it attacks Singh with absolute justification – for letting a minister openly defying his authority, and even bringing him back for a second term in the same ministry – nobody quite takes it seriously. Which leaves it to Mr Clean himself to sort out the mess. Should he or his party, much worse the nation, be held hostage to the worst of coalition politics?