Relief to YSR Congress
president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, the Supreme Court's order on Monday
gladdened the hearts of his partymen as the Ministers too will have to
account for the controversial decisions taken during the late Y.S.
Rajasekhara Reddy's regime.
All this while, the
Ministers had escaped liability for these decisions. Without disowning
the principle of the Cabinet's collective responsibility, they had
distanced themselves from some of the YSR government's decisions that
favoured industrialists and individuals.
Their
argument was that these decisions were taken without their knowledge.
Now, they will have to spell out specifically which of the 26 deals they
were kept in the dark by their Chief Minister, on the basis of minutes
of Cabinet meetings and notations leading to issuance of as many
Government Orders during 2007-09.
These orders relate
to allotment of lands and Special Economic Zones, grant of licences and
mining leases, the value of which, according to the First Information
Report (FIR) filed by the CBI, runs into thousands of crores. Jagati
Publications, of which ‘Sakshi', a Telugu daily, has received
investments of Rs.3,400 crore from various industrialists, the CBI
informed the Special Court.
Neither did the government file a counter to
the TDP's petition nor did the Advocate General appear in the High
Court to defend the Ministers and bureaucrats, said D.A. Somayajulu, a
leading member of the YSR Congress' think tank.
While
the YSR Congress is chuckling over the Congress government's
discomfiture, the Ministers themselves are caught in a bind on how to
respond to the Apex Court's notices. If they say that the government was
right in issuing the orders, then there is no illegality committed by
the YSR regime and thus there was no question of Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy
receiving favours as a quid pro quo. On the other hand, if the GOs were
illegal, all the Ministers will be called to account along with Mr.
Jaganmohan Reddy, of course.
On the political plane,
the timing of the Supreme Court's order could not have been worse for
the Congress as it is gearing up to fight by-election to seven Assembly
constituencies just six days from now.
The case of Mr.
Jaganmohan Reddy is that the Telugu Desam Party, which petitioned the
A.P. High Court alleging that he had amassed wealth illegally as a quid
pro quo for favours shown by his father, the late YSR, to certain
industrialists, had named several respondents, including the Chief
Secretary and many top bureaucrats. However, the CBI had chosen to
ignore all of them and picked on Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy, the
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