Raiding Arvind Mayaram: Why Now?
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-01-13 07:40:55
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The CBI raid on former finance secretary Arvind Mayaram, just days after he joined Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yarta, is one more attempt (in a long and ever-growing list) by the NDA government to muzzle dissent. Mayaram was spotted walking hand-in-hand with a smiling Rahul Gandhi and that raised hackles in the government. But why this should be so? Although the BJP is governing the nation, it does not have the support of 100 percent of the population. In fact, no government or no leader, however popular, can lay claim to such support. There always will be dissenting voices. The BJP gets only 38 percent (2019 Lok Sabha figure) of the votes in the national elections. That means that 62 percent of the people do not vote for it. In this 62 percent, there will be many who will actively oppose its policies. That does not mean that the government has to move against them.
The FIR that the CBI has filed against Mayaram charges him with providing undue favours to De La Rue International, a UK firm that supplied exclusive colour shift security threads for Indian bank notes. While it can be no one's case that corrupt government servants not be punished, this is a nearly 10 year old case as Mayaram became secretary in the finance ministry in 2012 and was shifted when the NDA came to power in 2014. The CBI has relied on a complaint against Mayaram dated February 14, 2017, which was received from Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary and CVO, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. If Mayaram had done something wrong during his tenure, and it had a complaint against him, why was the government sleeping till now (in fact, it should move against officers who failed to act on the complaint for 5 years for dereliction of duty)? Why dig up old cases the moment he was seen with Rahul Gandhi. This clearly reeks of vendetta politics, as were the actions of raiding opposition leaders and their associates in many states just before the elections in those states. The BJP has to live with the fact that, apart from opposition politicians who will oppose it for obvious reasons, there always will be some former bureaucrats, armed forces personnel, business magnates, celebrities from other walks of life, social activists and a section of the media that will oppose its policies for various reasons. It cannot and should not go after them. The earlier it understands this, the better for Indian democracy.
