Ethics defined the BJP way!

“Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar,” the statement by writer D.H Lawrence sounded so apt even after 85 years of his death.

Former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Lalit Modi was able to contrive through various political parties of India. BJP’s Arun Jaitley was once his bitter rival, critic and competitor. While Lalit owed his rise to Cricket Board in Rajasthan, Jaitley has been associated with Delhi. During the same period, Rajasthan BJP leader Vasundhara Raje was Modi’s friend and supporter. Within the Congress, Rajiv Shukla was his supporter, Union minister CP Joshi a rival and Shashi Tharoor an enemy for Lalit’s way of treating the various franchises. The act was taken to a new level by Lalit Modi with NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, who was Modi’s mentor in cricket politics, before the former IPL chief Lalit Modi grew in stature on the basis of the money that he was able to bring through IPL for BCCI. Though a vocal supporter of Lalit Modi, Pawar is known to have planned with the rival group in building pressure on Lalit Modi to checkmate and boot him out and forcing him to flee to London. Living in the safe havens of England could not have been possible without the solicited help of friends in political parties.
A new link to his friendship with political leaders emerged this week, when allegations surfaced against India’s foreign affairs minister Sushma Swaraj that she went out of her way to get him travel documents from the British government because his passport had been revoked by the Indian government for his alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Sushma Swaraj avoided media, but went on twitter to say that her act of helping Lalit Modi act was appropriate; and her party BJP too came out all guns blazing to defend her despite the fact that India’s Enforcement Directorate also had issued a blue corner notice against Lalit Modi. Her admission of having helped Lalit Modi on “humanitarian ground” as he had to sign surgery documents for his wife in Portugal not only amounts to impropriety but is also conflict of interest. Lalit’s friendship ran deeper, Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri had appeared between April 2012 and August 2014 among the battery of lawyers representing Modi in the passport case. British MP Keith Vaz who was mediating for him reportedly helped secure an admission for a relative of Sushma Swaraj at Sussex.
Under the disguise of “humanitarian ground” Sushma Swaraj assisted Lalit Modi with his travel documents, what in fact she did was to help a ‘fugitive’ wanted for use of black money in IPL. She in her capacity as foreign affairs minister should have tried to seek Lalit Modi’s extradition to India. Lalit Modi had run away from the Indian law and as a result was stripped off his Indian passport and within a few months of the BJP government coming to power, the Delhi High Court restored his passport and the Government of India, which had earlier revoked the passport (done by Manmohan Singh’s government), chose not to appeal against the decision.
Media reports from India highlight that Bansuri was among the lawyers who represented Lalit Modi in that case too, Sushma Swaraj took a rescue by saying that after his wife’s surgery, Lalit Modi came back to London. While doing so, she ignored the fact that major patients do need those “consent papers” signed. Sushma Swaraj not only helped him in arranging a travel document only for Portugal, but for until 2016 and the tomfool Lalit Modi took to partying with Paris Hilton and Naomi Campbell around the world; obviously brining forth the questions whether Modi really returned to London and was really beside his ailing wife. To top it all, within two months, the Rajasthan government led by Vasundhara Raje signed a memorandum of understanding with the same hospital in Lisbon to set up a state-of-the-art cancer institute in Jaipur.
Though there is no evidence and hence no allegations of financial irregularities, can India’s foreign affairs minister discount the fact that she has gone morally defunct? Can the BJP government that came into power on the agenda of getting black money back to the country, ignore the very fact that Lalit Modi was accused of betting, black money laundering and was aided by External Affairs Minister. It is hard for any Indian with a reasonable conscience to believe that Prime Minister’s office did not know of the active help being extended to Lalit Modi. Prime Minister’s silence on the issue only goes to say, what many Indians now have begun to believe : All good work has to be credited to Prime Minister Modi, and any wrong doing will get attributed to the person concerned –in this case Sushma Swaraj.
The government of India will have to provide answers to: Why did Sushma Swaraj as the External Affairs Minister not direct the Indian Embassy in UK to give temporary travel documents to Lalit Modi to travel one way from UK to Portugal and a second set of travel documents for coming from Portugal to India? Why did External Affairs Minister of India facilitate the travel of a fugitive from one country where he was taking shelter to another country and back, without insisting on sending him back to the country of his origin, i.e. the home country, to face the law?
With details like, Vasundhra Raje’s son Dushyant Singh BJP MP from Jhalawar-Baran in Rajasthan having received a sum of Rs 11.63 crore from Lalit Modi through a rather dubious way Rs 10 per share was purchased at Rs 1 lakh by Lalit Modi and around Rs 11 crore was routed to Raje’s son; do we need to define ethics the BJP way?
The expectations of those changes so well propagated by Narendra Modi are no less than duststorms.