Can the law reach the rich?

How many people want to bet that Kanimozhi will not get bail in the 2G scam case? And how many think she should?

Update: She didn’t get bail, was arrested and sent to jail.

So what was the problem with the JPC?

I wonder if anyone else finds it curious that the government agreed to the JPC (joint parliamentary committee) even before the Parliament opened for the budget session, after the entire winter session was lost due to the logjam over scams, in particular the Rs. 1.7 lakh crore (that’s 1.7 x 10^12 = 1.7 trillion) 2G scam. The logjam was caused by the government refusing to accept a JPC, and the opposition trying to force one. And now, with a recess intervening, the government has agreed to the formation of JPC, and the opposition is muted in their jubilation. So why didn’t they accept one earlier?

Certain things have happened in the meanwhile, CBI has arrested Raja, the Supreme Court has goaded the CBI into questioning Anil Ambani, whose ADAG group is supposed to have benefited immensely from Raja’s policy of allocating 2G spectrum without an auction, CBI has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against Advani (on the Babri Masjid demolition case), and Advani has apologised to Sonia Gandhi for saying that her family has huge undisclosed sums of money in Swiss bank accounts.

Make one wonder, were backroom deals done between the government and the opposition to ensure that only a few scapegoats are punished? Will we ever see a report on how much was paid as bribe by various people?  Will we ever see a return of the crores that went into these bribes? Will the nation regain more than a small fraction of the loss incurred to the exchequer? We have to wait and see.

Corruption and nepotism: DMK style

In the wake of the 2G licensing controversy, involving some thousands of crores, newspapers are reporting the back and forth between Karunanidhi, who refuses to accept blame for DMK’s A.Raja, who was the telecom minister at the time, and Jayalalitha and others including the Auditor-General who are urging the Central government to take action against Raja.

It seems to have been conveniently forgotten by the press that Raja is Karunanidhi’s nephew. Even a front page report today, with the news that Raja has finally resigned, does not mention the family connection anywhere. Have we become so blase’ about family connections in corruption?