Ranjit Sinha - Namak Haraam

King Henry II of England and Thomas Beckett were good friends. They were even “drinking club” friends. When Beckett was appointed Chancellor he did everything that the King desired, even taxed the Church. The King even had Beckett playing foster-father to his sons. The King was constantly in conflict with the Church and wanted the Royalty be supreme over the Church. To settle the conflict and gain supremacy he appointed his best friend Beckett as the Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s when things went wrong. Once he became Archbishop, Beckett turned pious and refused to oblige and sign any agreements that would establish the supremacy of the King over the Church. Beckett is reported to have started penance for his earlier sins. He refused to break with the Pope in Rome. Beckett was murdered in 1170, presumably under orders of Henry II, and was later bestowed Sainthood by the Pope. Beckett’s story became famous through T.S. Elliot’s “Murder in the cathedral” and partly referenced in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury tales”.

When Ranjit Sinha (RS) was appointed CBI Director last year there were protests from the leaders of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. They had apprehensions that he was another puppet who would do the bidding of Sonia Gandhi & Co. Their suspicion was justified considering RS had a record of being servantile and his record also had some minor blemishes. But when a person assumes a certain office he brings his own story and burden to bear on it. Not many newspapers or TV channels have narrated this story but OpenMagazine has found a genuine explanation for the twin stories that culminated in the destruction of Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar. We’ll get to that. In the meantime, let’s hear some familiar nonsense about who’s to blame for the last Parliament session washout.

It has been a tradition now in our media to blame the Opposition, in particular the BJP, for the Parliament blockades and washout of sessions. The media morons believe, like they do on their TV channels, that everything can be sorted out with a debate. My answer is a clear NO. You cannot debate obvious crimes. When the Parliament was blocked for the 2G issue the same media cried themselves hoarse blaming the opposition. The end result was a farcical JPC whose chairman was in a rush to distribute clean chits. The tweets of the Numero Uno and Numero Unee are reflective of this culture on TV where they believe parliament sessions are the only way to sort out crimes. This is an argument the Congress offers to gain time and prevent action on crimes. Democracy exists far beyond the walls of parliament and we have seen time and again that parliament is incompetent in dealing with criminals. They can only make laws, nothing more. In this case too CNN-IBN and it’s govt foot-soldiers blamed the BJP only to turn turtle in the next few days.

What Ashwani Kumar did was a serious crime which is being played down by the Congress and the media. His role was one of obstruction of justice and protecting people who may have the potential of being indicted by a court in the massive Coalgate scam. The Opposition is right in stalling the parliament where the Congress sought to divert all the issues by bringing in some bogus Food Security Bill with elections in mind and then accused other parties of being “anti-poor” because they stalled parliament. This dubious conduct by the Congress is now familiar to all. All, except our specialists in the media. The Congress, as usual, claimed the SC had not pronounced any verdict and there was an inquiry against Bansal. Nonsense! The SC observations on the doctored Coalgate affidavit is enough for the PM to be sacked. And Bansal? He wasn’t sacked because Sonia Gandhi had an attack of conscience as we came to learn. But in just over a week, Pallavi Ghosh meekly tweets that Congress was to blame for Parliament washout which ridicules the propaganda of her own bosses.

SoniaG reportedly rushed to PM’s residence on May 10 to seek the sacking of Bansal and Kumar. She created all the drama for the media to show how strongly she acts against corruption. Her phones were probably so dead that she had to rush to 7RCR. Nonsense again! It turns out that the tapes in which Bansal was pimping for railway appointments and distributing the loot was out with some in the media and so possibly also with the Congress boss. Kanchan Gupta indicates what exactly could have been the contents of the bribery tapes. It’s like when you’re finally clean-bowled in Cricket and even the third umpire can’t save you if it isn’t a no-ball. That’s when it dawned upon Sonia Gandhi that the damage in retaining Bansal could be far more severe than the Congress anticipated. So while at it, the Congress made both ministers go since AshwaniK would have to go anyway at some point of time. Better hurt now than later. That’s a good choice. But if knowing all this the PM and SoniaG were against sacking Bansal earlier it speaks of monumental dishonesty. All the editors in the media who kept giving MMS a certificate of “honesty” must hang their heads in shame.

In all of this can the lady who is now haunting Pakistan be left out of her own 2 cents of special intelligence? Absolutely not! So there you go, there’s Barkha Dutt telling us about the “Punjabi” conspiracy of some sort. What Open Magazine, which is far more reliable than Barkha, tells us is that an aspirant to the post of Law Minister leaked out information of AshwaniK’s meddling with the CBI affidavit. I don’t think we need the CIA to infer that OpenMag is referring to zero loss. The leak being a done job, there was no way Ranjit Sinha could escape admitting the facts in the SC of the affidavit. He had an added incentive. OpenMag reports AshwaniK was harsh on him and even humiliated him with rude comments on Ranjit’s poor knowledge of English. You see, in India, it is better to be an English Laloo like Salman Khurshid or Shashi Tharoor than a desi CBI director. In short, AshwaniK and the PM’s cohorts gangraped the CBI affidavit and left it a poor survivor to be sent to a hospital.

In the case of Bansal, RS had an old score to settle. It seems Mahesh Kumar, the 10Crore briber who was in the Rail business earlier too, had shunted him out to unattractive posts in the past. So without anyone asking him or any govt advising the CBI, RS started a special watch on Mahesh Kumar and poor Pawan Bansal was caught with his monkey-hand grabbing peanuts from the trap, just like that lady in Radiagate. Conversations were taped over months and even the sacrificial Goat that Bansal used in a puja in the end couldn’t save him. Unwittingly, Ranjit Sinha has become the saviour of CBI and may finally be the man to save it from the evil clutches of the most corrupt govt ever in the history of India. Ranjit Sinha became Thomas Beckett. RS also finally managed to put some fear into the hearts of politicians. He also proved there is no need for the Jokepal, a strong, independent CBI and Judiciary is quite adequate to deal with corruption.

The Congress and some of its allies in the UPA have spawned such a culture of corruption and brazen loot that every joker has started believing he has a “Right To Loot”. Whether it’s Bansal, Ashwani, Marans, Kripashankars or the whole gang of UPA. This doesn’t happen if there is zero tolerance for corruption. This happens only when the whole gang gets a clear signal that looting is okay as long as the Mafia is paid its due. This is what the UPA has been reduced to. And this birthright to corruption doesn’t end with politicians it also extends to the news media who keep lying through their nose to protect their corrupt masters. SoniaG has given a clear signal through Shashi Tharoor and Abhishek Singhvi that if you’re tainted just take a chill-pill, spend some time taking a vacation. You will be back quite soon. If banks are money-laundering as Cobrapost suggests it is surely not without approval and a guarantee of protection.

The Congress appointed Ranjit Sinha with the belief he will be another puppet and be loyal to the Queen and her coterie. The story has gone terribly wrong. The Beckett story was made into a movie. The same movie was adapted and remade in Bollywood – it was called “Namak Haraam” (featuring Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan). In both movies the “namak haraam” dies. I have no doubts that Ranjit Sinha is going to be called a ‘namak haraam’ in Congress and media circles. One just hopes he doesn’t meet the same fate.

Never Rat On Your Friends & Always Keep Your Mouth Shut

In a strange turn of events, Kapil Sibal the Congress Minister, called the media “corrupt”. This was in Bhopal and must have come as a shock to our media friends. So far whenever the Congress was confronted with its massive scams they always pointed fingers at the BJP or the past NDA govt. Now they are so tired and frustrated they are pointing fingers at the media itself. This is like a love-story gone terribly wrong. But we’ll get to it a bit later.

Take a look at the pic on the left. This is not a scene from some mafia movie. These are Congress goons walking the streets of Kolar (Karnataka) on election-day on May 5, 2013 with swords and rods. This would intimidate any voter but our Election Commission recorded that polling was “peaceful” perhaps because the goons didn’t need to use the weapons. While some local channels in Karnataka carried a report on this, not a single national media house reported it. What should interest people is that there is a cop walking alongside these goons. The pressure of keeping off the hail of scams and misdeeds of the Congress is indeed telling on their media friends. The party and the govt hadn’t gotten past the Coalgate CBI affidavit scam and a new one broke out in the form of Pawan Bansal’s nephew. It is how our media deals with these scams that should be a bigger cause of outrage.  

The media friends of the Congress, like NDTV, CNN-IBN and Headlines Today, and I’m sure quite a few other channels, describe the conduct of Ashwini Kumar in dictating the CBI affidavit to Supreme Court as “interference” with the investigation. Interference? That’s a mild word to describe the crime. It is actually “obstruction of justice”. And then the party itself describes the changes dictated by Kumar in the affidavit to be “negligible”. What will our media friends do? See this tweet from Pallavi Ghosh of CNN-IBN. Ever seen a bigger blooper? Why would anyone question a reporter criticising the govt, unless it’s her friends from the Congress party? But that is hardly what her channel does as we shall see. And then she complains that she is lampooned for defending the govt. Really? Since when is it the job of a reporter or a channel to defend the govt? This is what convinces me that those who call themselves journalists probably didn’t complete the right course.

And there is our “Numero uno” political analyst Rajdeep Sardesai. This pathetic editor wonders if a minister should resign for impropriety. Impropriety? That is all that it is? Impropriety? Even an ordinary guy on the street would call a thief a thief. But hey, it involves his friends from the Congress party whom he frequently showers awards with. Everything in the story of Pawan Bansal’s nephew’s bribery case indicates it’s a massive racket and a scam. Turns out the 10Crores bribe deal for a top job in Railways is because the position handles contracts worth 2000 Crores. That’s how the bribe-investment of 10 crores was planned to be recovered. Rajdeep (The English Lalloo that he is) doesn’t get it that top appointments in Railways cannot be made unless the concerned minister was involved. That’s not all. The assets of Vijay Singla, Bansal’s nephew, have gone up from zero to 150 crores in the last five years. To Rajdeep, that is mere “impropriety”.

When someone expresses shock that Rajdeep merely terms it “impropriety” he has an even more interesting answer. He says “Impropriety/ Criminality up for debate”. Is that so? So all that the rats will do is “debate” it? By what logic do the acts of AshwaniK or Bansal warrant a debate? This is where our editors have become puppies and doormats. What is truly required of the media is clear and strong condemnation of both AK and Bansal. Instead, they stupidly believe that if they conduct a debate they have done their job. Naturally, people ask embedded reporters like PallaviG how much is being paid because they suspect “paid reporting”. I have explained before that not all issues are matters for a debate. In the cases of AK and Bansal there is undeniable evidence of not only impropriety but criminality. Reducing their nonsense to mere debates on TV shows how desperate our MSM is to protect their friends? “Thoda Congress ke taraf se defend kar dena” as was overheard on NDTV sometime back.

The trouble with the news media being friendly or getting too close with the ruling party is that familiarity is sooner or later bound to breed contempt. Till a few years ago the media only had to contend with voices from the Opposition parties of covering up crimes of the Congress. They could easily cut off such voices. Now they are finding it difficult because the Social Media keeps breathing down their necks. While I have quoted Rajdeep Sardesai, the story is not different for other media celebs and the intention here is not to single him out.

On May 6 when the stench of misdeeds of AKumar and Bansal was still hanging heavily in the air another guy decided to go ahead with an expose on PSU banks. Doesn’t it sound strange? This is Anirudh Bahal of Cobrapost, the former Tehelka guy. The man has no record of ever exposing a single scam or misdeed of the Congress. Surprising, isn’t it? Considering that Congress is a treasure island of scams. While the contents of his expose may be genuine his timing is suspect and I have to wonder about the motive. Why would a cheap sting operator release his explosive story when the media is already burdened with two of the latest scams in Coalgate and Railgate? He would ideally want all the attention to his story and for it to run all day and night in the media. It didn’t look like that and the money-laundering story of PSU banks went cold in a few hours. Friends help each other, you know. Any distraction is gladly welcome.

Now that the corruption and its defence have become so brazen with the Congress they are now pointing fingers at their own friends and calling them corrupt. The MSM had this coming. Imagine, years of sleeping with the Congress, getting phony Padma awards, facilitation in funding and in the end the party calls their media friends corrupt. It doesn’t stop there. Livemint reports that the Parliamentary Committee on IT now wants to bring in a Statutory Regulator as a watchdog for the media. I welcome it only to the extent if the watchdog is a Constitutional body like the EC or CAG. No matter how much I condemn our corrupt media I would simply not recommend the govt ever appointing its own regulators for the media. That would be like two corrupt forces joining hands. We have already seen what the PCI has turned out to be. The PCI chairman is often busy attending ‘Mushairas’ with his Congress buddies.

On the political front the Congress brought in the Food Security Bill to counter the opposition to their scams. They suggested that BJP and others are “anti-poor” because they aren’t allowing the FSB to pass. This is trickery of the worst kind and the media should have called it as such. They won’t. Friends indeed! On May 7 CNN-IBN reported that Sonia Gandhi was against AshwaniK and Bansal continuing but MMS was opposed to it. Heard anything more absurd?

There’s a golden rule in the mafia: “Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut”. MMS is a man who keeps his mouth shut always. The media is the mafia that followed the golden rule so far and never ratted on its friends in the Congress and always kept its mouth shut. Even in a very obvious case of criminality they want to “debate” the misdeeds of AshwaniK and Pawan Bansal. That is as stupid as any editorialist can ever get. Editors should have been demanding both ministers to step down instead of “debating” obvious crimes. Well, they follow the golden rule religiously. Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut. Now that their own friends are calling them “corrupt” it has come to pass that the media now stinks for everyone.

For India to Progress, Congress Must Dissolve

Products and brands have a life-cycle. Commonly this cycle progresses as development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The pioneer of mosquito repellents in India, the Tortoise brand (popularly called ‘Kachchua Chaap’) is still famous but dead. The toothpaste ‘Promise’ is now mostly given in small bathroom packs in hotels. Ambassador car is a dead brand that is being artificially sustained. The first low-cost one-rupee pen in India, Comfort, is dead. The first famous courier service in India, Skypak, is now into other businesses or exists in other forms. Where’s Daewoo? Across the world brands have been killed by businesses either because they have outlived their purpose and value proposition or they couldn’t survive innovations and competition.

India became independent in 1947 but there is still no reason to believe we have freedom. The British left and the Congress party replaced them. Ever since, it has been downhill. The tragic fact is that for a vast country like ours we borrowed a parliamentary system of a tiny island. We borrowed from the US Constitution but borrowed the workings of a small island. A terrible lack of vision! In the US there are no ‘ceremonial’ offices. The US too had many political parties in the beginning. The Whig Party, The Federalist Party, The Democratic-Republican party and the Independents. Most of the Presidents initially came from these parties or were independents. After about 60 years of the US independence these parties disappeared and then came the Republican and Democratic parties as we know today. If one looks up US politics they too have a whole lot of regional parties but at the national level two parties dominate the law-making and governance. After 65 years we must finally accept that the Congress in India needs to die. When the Nixon hearings were conducted, the Senate committee comprised members of both parties which finally led to his resignation because of the US Supreme Court. In India, the Congress is capable of even turning a JPC into a scam.

We have all heard of huge elephants unwilling to shake off the chains that bind their leg. The elephant can easily do so but was bound to it since it was a baby and lives in the belief that it can’t shake off that chain. This is true of the Congress party in India too. The baby elephant that India was in 1947 was chained to the Congress party. 65 years later the huge elephant is still tied to that chain. Mahatma Gandhi wanted the party dissolved immediately on independence but those who replaced the British became the British. In the early 1970s one of the first movies to portray the corruption backed by violence in politics was Gulzar’s “Mere Apne”. It reflected the direction in which politics, largely led by Congress alone, was headed. Corruption, violence, destroying democratic institutions, electoral malpractices and a huge black economy all came from the fountainhead called Congress.

In a history of the Congress party full of bad governance, unfulfilled promises and intolerable corruption the latest attempt to cover up the Coalgate scam is as bad as any crime ever experienced in a democracy. Not since the Mughals or the British has the nation been plundered so badly. When the Emergency was declared in 1975 some newspapers carried black borders in protest and some crawled. Since then, much of the media not only became slaves of the Congress party and the government they have even become traitors of the people they were supposed to serve. What else explains the frequent clean-chits and “honest” title defence of Manmohan Singh? A PM who has watched lakhs of crores worth of scams happening right under his nose was being defended by our media. Shameful!

It’s more than the massive corruption. Every institution of India’s democracy has been corrupted and misused to serve the security and comfort of the party and one family – The Gandhis. Everyone in the Congress should be wondering how they became such slaves. It even provides for special security for Robert Vadra, Priyanka Vadra and exemptions for them from screening during air travel or travel anywhere in the country. This country has been reduced to those that have tin-pot dictators like North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe. I wonder if even Cuba does so badly. The off-springs of this very Congress who broke away, like the NCP or the Samajwadi Party have continued the same standard of corruption and misrule. Not just that, they have completely destroyed any concern and respect for ordinary men and women. They have turned the common people into specks of dust to be just wiped off the desk very frequently.

In the name of fake secularism the Congress party and its supporters have divided the nation through religious reservations and privileges. Every policy of the party smacks of vote-bank politics and nothing more. Instead of moving towards an equitable society and more towards a uniform law for all the Congress has now even set up Sharia courts. Rahul Gandhi campaigns in Karnataka and talks about corruption. With what face does this non-performer talk about corruption? His own personal integrity or commitment to public work is suspect going by his poor attendance and participation in parliament. The same goes for the PM who promises a corruption-free state in his insipid campaigns. All of this, while they represent the most corrupt party in the entire democratic world! What does it say about the slavery of Congress and its supporters who still live a life of slavery to one family which is protected like a royal household? Sonia Gandhi enjoys all the trappings of a queen without the slightest responsibility or accountability for any deeds of the govt or her party.

What exactly is Sonia Gandhi’s greatest contribution to India? It has to be that coterie called NAC, an extra-constitutional body that is a private club which drafts laws for the country. Each member of this coterie is from some NGO or the other which has become extraordinarily wealthy through funding and donations from mysterious sources. Most members of this coterie were rewarded for their malicious political campaign against opponents. This is the level to which the Congress has brought politics in this country to. The scams, of course, are too long to list and each time the party members have only acted to cover up the truth and protect the culprits. Naturally! It was rightly pointed out by someone that the first purpose that the Congress party sees while being in power is to accumulate enough money to fight the next election. Everything else is secondary. And then the queen talks about ‘zero tolerance’ of corruption while the ‘Prince of fails’ mocks the nation by stating “power is poison”.

In response to the SC observations on CBI on Coalgate on April 30 the Congress spokie Janardhan Dwivedi claimed that his party has always accepted court rulings. This is one big lie. It is indeed a court ruling in Indira Gandhi’s case overturning her election that led to the imposition of Emergency in this country. That’s a black deed unmatched in any democratic country during peace time. Following this, IndiraG went on to pack the SC with judges of her choice and tinkered with the Constitution like it was some baby’s toy. This is how the Congress members forget their own history and brazenly claim they have respect for the law and Courts. It is also a party where a Gandhi is a lifetime president. Democracy does not course in the veins of Congress. A party that does not have or respect democracy at home cannot respect democracy in the nation.

In the attempt to keep its stranglehold on power at any cost the party has destroyed almost every democratic institution in this country. Judges and investigators have landed themselves top postings immediately on retirement for being slaves to the party. Scheme after scheme has been named after some member of the Nehru-Gandhi family as if everyone else in India was just an also-ran in her history. This is neither the democracy nor the freedom that people who fought the British dreamt about. In all of this the media continued to treat the PM and Sonia Gandhi like Gods. They proclaimed from rooftops that MMS was “honest and uncorrupt” as if angels from heaven had whispered in their ears. Shameless editors kept giving these certificates till the Supreme Court finally burst their bubble in the Coalgate case with the bogus affidavits by CBI. The Congress has not only been brazen in defending its corruption and misrule but has now shown the audacity to dupe even the Supreme Court of the country. A shameless doormat of the party passing off as a spokie called the SC "paranoid" on TimesNow on April 30 because of its observations.

NDTV, CNN-IBN, Headlines Today, Times Now and all other media outlets have become spineless puppies that do not have the guts to address a single question to the Gandhis. They hurl the choicest abuses at all other political parties and leaders. In the case of CBI’s Coalgate affidavit Barkha Dutt even states she cancelled a discussion because no Congress spokie was willing to be on the channel. Is that how news media is supposed to operate? You would have a discussion or analysis only if the criminal is represented? Are you some court of law by yourself? In contrast all the media outlets provide a platform for the likes of Sheila Dikshit to shed buckets of tears over her own incompetence in handling Delhi as if her sainthood was tainted. The misuse of CBI was evident in many cases and yet the media maintained silence. It seems the only truthful media that is still left standing is the Supreme Court. And I have said this before too.

A company kills a brand at an appropriate time in its life-cycle. India too needs to kill the Congress party which has long outlived its purpose. It doesn’t mean killing the party’s members. There are many good members in the Congress who must free themselves from slavery and reaffirm their true independence and freedom. They must join other parties or create a new formation completely different from this Congress. Not suggesting that other parties are clean but the Congress has been and will remain the Fountainhead of Corruption or the “Congotri” of corruption. Symbolically, other parties should also remove the word ‘Congress’ from their name if they have it, like the NCP. Corruption in the air, land, water, fire and earth as someone put it (2G, irrigation, coal, land). Every reform or policy that the Congress makes has a backdoor or a window that provides for massive loot. There is hardly a single policy or action that the party and the UPA have taken in the last 9 years that has not been associated by a scam and loot. That’s not all. Caning citizens, failure in foreign relations, poor handling and religious politicisation of terrorism, tolerating separatists, discriminating between states, demonising opponents, demoralising the police and the army, farmer suicides, stagnant economy, inflation, unemployment, fake cases against political opponents, constantly appeasing enemies of the state and even poor vigil of our borders. Never has this nation felt so sunk.

No country in history has ever progressed with bad governance and excessive corruption as partners. None! The Congress suffers from this twin ailment since decades. Its survival is detrimental to the progress of India. Death is the only cure. The corrupt media protects this corrupt party and its bigwigs. Someone has coined the slogan “Congress-mukt Bharat” like the slogan for “Gutka-mukt rajya”. I wholeheartedly agree with it. For India to progress, Congress must die. And when the Congress dies so will the corrupt media and democratic institutions can limp back to normalcy! It may not dramatically end corruption or evil but it is the equivalent of pulling down the statues of Stalin or Saddam and getting rid of their ideologies. There can at least be a new start.

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