Commentary/T V R Shenoy

If the Jain Commission report is here, can elections be far behind?

When the Siberian crane is heard in Bharatpur we know winter can't be far behind. Is there any sign to tell us when an election is due?

Let us thank Narasimha Rao for giving us one. In 1993, Uttar Pradesh was to elect a new assembly -- and Rao's tame investigators resurrected the Ayodhya issue. In 1996, there was to be a general election -- and Rao's handpicked CBI director pinned hawala charges on all and sundry.

Narasimha Rao may have left the stage, but his spirit lingers on. No, I am not going to talk of the way in which Ayodhya has again become a tactic to push L K Advani, Kalyan Singh, and 47 others on the defensive. Right now, I prefer to talk about how three other investigations have become political tools.

Let us start with Jitendra Prasada. The AICC session in Calcutta proved just how efficiently he controls the party machinery, a point not lost on his insecure boss. So Chacha Kesri excluded Prasada from a policy-making unit and named some more Congress office-bearers to dilute his powers.

Prasada is too smart to escalate a cold war into hot war. He has answered Kesri's challenge by ignoring it. Instead of muttering angrily about the newly-appointed general-secretaries, he talks of the Jain Commission!

This is an issue calculated to win Sonia Gandhi's approval.

She believes -- probably correctly -- that all the facts about her husband's assassination haven't yet been brought out. A Congressman who rakes up the issue will have the Gandhi family behind him, which translates into immunity from Kesri.

Prasada understands the game as well as anyone else. So he will ask the prime minister to put the Jain Commission's interim report before Parliament. He will even insist there should be a special season if necessary.

But Gujral can't afford to release the interim report. Everybody knows it criticises the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Given that the Tamil Maanila Congress cherishes its links with the Gandhis, it will be very tough for the TMC and the DMK to sit at the same table. (Not that they entertain very friendly feelings for each other even now!)

Nor can the Congress continue to support a government that includes DMK ministers. Gujral isn't the man to stand up to pressure, so the DMK may be squeezed out. But such a maneuver will force the other regional parties to re-examine their own positions. If the DMK can be kicked out, are they any less vulnerable?

Gujral's response to Prasada's demands is to bury his head in the sands, and pray fervently that the issue goes away. Since the government must say something, the prime minister and the home minister will state that they must examine the issue further.

Why should they? Examining and cross-examining was Justice Jain's job. Once he unearths the facts, it is up to the government to act on his report. Or to reject it altogether.

So much for Prasada and the Jain Commission. Once the Congress vice-president starts baying for blood, other Congressmen will follow suit on other issues. Specifically, I believe the Congress is preparing to rake up the hawala case once again.

Everybody knows that the Delhi high court tore up the flimsy chargesheet filed against Advani. The Congress insists that this judgment should be challenged in the Supreme Court.

Frankly, this doesn't make too much sense. If the government wants to drag Advani to court, it must follow suit with all the others named in the hawala case. This means that Madhavrao Scindia and Arjun Singh, both newly-elected to the Congress Working Committee, will be back in the dock.

Raking up the issues of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and the hawala scandal have the potential of helping the Congress. But the third probe turned political hot potato has the power to harm the party immeasurably.

Because the Left Front is planning to revive the Bofors investigation. The Communists calculate that Bofors will pin down the Gandhis. And the general ruckus will, hopefully, make voters forget about the Rs 25-billion ledger scam in West Bengal.

Pardon me for sounding cynical, but I doubt Congressmen genuinely care about the fate of the Jain Commission and the hawala case, and that the Left Front is sincere about the Bofors probe. But these noises indicate that various parties are jockeying for position in a general election.

Which leads up to one last question: will the Lok Sabha polls fly in before the Siberian cranes arrive or after they are here?

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