The CBI has been given sanction to prosecute former finance minister P. Chidambaram in the Aircel-Maxis case. The top Congress politician and leading critic of the NDA government claims this is political vendetta. The nation abounds in cases registered against white collar crimes, mainly against leaders in powerful posts who can take decisions on huge financial deals. Some have led to convictions, such as against Jayalalithaa, Sasikala and Lalu Prasad Yadav in the fodder scam. But the pattern of cases moving towards prosecution in the last stages of the NDA government are subject to the assumption that a political motive is behind it. The nearness of elections is be factored into assessing this belated move after a case was first filed in 2011 on the Aircel-Maxis issue.
Given the success rate of convictions on white collar crimes against the high and mighty and the slow pace of judicial processes, it’s open to question whether the Aircel-Maxis case will come to a quick conclusion. It must, however, be said that sanctioning of the deal by the FIPB rather than the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs lends it an arbitrariness over basic protocols and there’s a need for it to be thoroughly probed by a competent authority than be seen under a political lens. The CBI’s own record in the handling of corruption cases in high places was patchy even before it ran into image credibility problems wrought by internal differences. As the even more spectacular charges in the main 2G scam case appears to have petered out after coming under judicial review, futility might just be the feared end-result.
