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Breather perhaps, but Chidambaram still in
trouble
Thursday February 02, 2012 08:21:33 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi:
The Supreme Court ruling on the 2G scam may have provided him a
breather. But Home Minister P. Chidambaram, facing unending flak
since 2009, is still not out of danger zone in the case.
For a politician who has seen meteoric rise, there seem to be no
end to troubles dogging him since the Congress returned to power
three years ago.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court, while cancelling 122 2G licences,
left the decision of probing the role of Chidambaram -- who was
then finance minister -- in the case to a separate trial court.
This was enough for the opposition to demand that Chidambaram
should step down.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "The upfront of
today's order is that his role has to be investigated... He has no
moral right to continue."
In the first year as home minister, post Mumbai attack,
Chidambaram, now 67, won praise even from the BJP for his handling
of the security situation.
But the honeymoon was short.
A petition against the Harvard-educated lawyer in the Madras High
Court questions the validity of his election to the Lok Sabha in
2009.
He has been accused of manipulating the vote count. The petition
has been filed Raja Kannappan of the AIADMK, now Tamil Nadu's
ruling party.
2011 was a bad year for Chidambaram.
He drew flak over the way Yoga guru Baba Ramdev's gathering in
Delhi was broken up by Delhi Police, which cracked down on
thousands of men and women in a midnight raid. The action left a
woman dead.
He was also widely blamed for the arrest of social activist Anna
Hazare in August last year that led to widespread protests.
Chidambaram was at the receiving end in the winter session of
parliament for allegedly influencing police to quash a criminal
case against a Delhi hotelier who was his former client. He denied
the charge.
The minister was earlier embarrassed when it was found that of a
list of India's most wanted fugitives said to be hiding in
Pakistan included three men who were actually in India -- and one
in a Mumbai prison!
The list had been overseen by the home ministry.
Denounced as arrogant by some of his own Congress colleagues,
Chidambaram has ceaselessly hogged the limelight since the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) returned to power in 2009.
The suave, articulate Tamil politician was a close associate of
late former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
He first got elected to parliament from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu in
1984, and immediately became a junior home minister under Rajiv
Gandhi.
He held the commerce portfolio under P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991.
He climbed the ladder to become finance minister in 1996 in the
governments led by H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral.
He lost the 1999 Lok Sabha election after falling out with the
Congress but returned to national politics in 2004 as finance
minister and later as home minister in December 2008.
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