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An independent Lokpal inquiry could have ended the Rafale controversy.

Whether or not there was a scam in Rafale, the allegations of a scam are threatening to defeat the Modi government’s boast of being a scam-free government.

Rajiv Gandhi lost an election to the Bofors scandal but nothing ever came out of it. A. Raja and the UPA-2 government lost face to the 2G scandal but the court found no evidence of corruption. The UPA-2 was also discredited with Robert Vadra’s alleged corruption but the BJP governments at the Centre and state haven’t made much progress on those investigations.

May be there was no scam in all those cases, or just plain cover-ups by the prosecuting agencies. Politically speaking, the issue is never whether there’s been a real scam, but the perception of it. And the Modi government is losing a daily battle of perception over allegations of corruption in the purchase of Rafale fighter jets from France.

Also read: In the Rafale brouhaha, India has missed its real, bigger defence scandal

The deal was signed in September 2016. It’s been nearly two years but the perception that the government has something to hide only keeps growing. It sounds strange that the government can’t reveal the price at which it bought the fighter jets, or that an Indian conglomerate steeped in debt is getting the offset contracts for it.

Allegations and counter-allegations fly. The Modi government’s critics, from the Congress party to former BJP minister Arun Shourie, are crying foul. The government has its own answers to the allegations that have been levelled.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman sounded irritated with the press conference by Prashant Bhushan, Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha Wednesday.

1.All allegations being levelled in various press conferences are already answered on the floor of the Parliament. A recent attempt, in the House,to malign the government through baseless charges collapsed. Today’s was yet another attempt at repeating fabricated facts. #Rafale — Nirmala Sitharaman (@nsitharaman) August 8, 2018

Judge, jury, executioner

The reason why the Rafale allegations make the government look worse by the day is because the accused is declaring itself innocent. The government is the accused, and the government only says it is innocent. It needs an independent third party to decide.

Put simply, the Modi government wants us to believe it does not do any corruption only because it says so. Proof of the Modi government’s honesty is a self-attested certificate.

Also read: Modi should not allow Rafale jet deal to become another Bofors

Nobody’s asking for an enquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or any of the myriad anti-corruption agencies because all of them have been reduced to political tools. They have always been so, but the Modi government has been brazen about using them to go after only those politicians who belong to opposition parties.

The more the government denies wrongdoing, the more it will appear to be covering up. That is the point where the controversy has reached.

When there were corruption allegations by The Wire against BJP president Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah, he promptly filed a defamation case against the website and its journalists. Look, his father’s party said, he’s filed a defamation case because he has nothing to hide. Now a court will decide.

Similarly, why can’t there be an independent enquiry in the Rafale deal?

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s (CAG) report on the deal has missed its deadline but should be out by December. The issues that have been raised, however, may not all be within the purview of the CAG.

If only there was a functioning office of the Lokpal today, opposition parties or concerned citizens could simply have gone to the Lokpal. They would have trusted this institution because it has enough safeguards to be autonomous of the government.

Importantly, the CBI and the Central Vigilance Commission have been made almost subservient to the office of the Lokpal. The Lokpal law creates for the first time a mechanism where corruption enquiries can be carried out in a manner truly independent of the political inclinations and interference of the government of the day. Officers investigating cases referred to by the Lokpal cannot be transferred by the government, for instance.

“It’s complicated”

Nearly five years after the law was enacted with the support of the BJP, the Modi government keeps delaying the process of the appointment of the Lokpal. It keeps finding one excuse after another to delay the process, even as it faces contempt proceedings before the Supreme Court. Such is the fear of an independent anti-corruption body that the Modi government would rather defy the Supreme Court than let the body become a reality.

For the longest time, the excuse was that the law requires the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha to be a member of the selection committee, and there is no leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha. Parliament rules require a party to have at least a tenth of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha to have a leader of the opposition.

Also read: Nirmala Sitharaman’s answers do not explain Modi govt’s refusal to disclose Rafale details

The government argued before the court that it first needed to get Parliament to amend this rule, only then could it proceed with the process of appointing a Lokpal. Then the government amended the Lokpal law in 2016 but didn’t touch this rule! The Supreme Court then said the government should go ahead with the process of appointing a Lokpal without having the leader of the opposition in the selection committee.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan has asked the Supreme Court to itself appoint a Lokpal without waiting for the government, whose response to Bhushan’s contempt petition is that appointing a Lokpal is a “complicated” process.

What’s not so complicated is that the government is refusing the creation of an independent body that could put a question mark on its claim of being a corruption-free government.

Was there a scam in the Rafale deal? Not all of us are experts in defence deals, but everyone can see that the government doesn’t want a Lokpal that could separate the wheat from the chaff.

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