Putting a full stop to the series of acquittals recently for the leaders of UPA constituents like DMK and Congress in 2G scam and Adarsh Housing Scam, the judiciary has at least pulled the rug beneath the Congress and its allies upbeat mood. The much-awaited verdict on Lalu Prasad Yadav, the firebrand leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and former chief minister of Bihar holding him guilty in the second fodder scam case has spoiled the game plans of Congress-RJD for coming elections of 2018-19. The RJD chief has been convicted in the Deoghar treasury case, in which he and others were accused of fraudulently withdrawing Rs 89.27 lakh from the treasury between 1991 and 1994, while co-accused and former CM Jagannath Mishra has been acquitted.
The quantum of sentence will be announced on January 3, 2018, while the verdict on RJD chief, however, carries huge thrust and is likely to impact how the RJD positions itself in the alliance arithmetic in 2018 and 2019 elections.
The fraudulent withdrawal of public money from Deogarh treasury in the years when Lalu Yadav was the Bihar CM was brazen in a chaotic rule of Lalu. The amount of Rs 89.27 lakhs may not be staggering but it forms a part of the larger multi-crore fodder scam, wherein money was siphoned off in the name of buying cattle feed and landed in personal coffers of RJD leaders, particularly Lalu Yadav and his family members, as well as bureaucrats in the Bihar government. There are a number of fodder scam cases and Lalu Yadav has been convicted in two, today being the second conviction.
Interestingly, the earlier conviction was announced in 2013 in Chaibasa treasury case having similar illegal withdrawals. The 2013 conviction had held Lalu Prasad, Jagannath Mishra and others guilty of fraudulent transfer of money from the government exchequer and falsification of records in connection with the Rs 900 crore fodder scam.
The institution of the CAG, then headed by TN Chaturvedi, had played a crucial role in figuring out a possible embezzlement from Bihar Treasury, which started from 1985 onwards and went on for a decade. There were false expense reports and delays in submissions, and the cumulative transfers amounted to Rs 900 crore approximately.
Now, with Lalu's conviction in the second fodder scam, the taint of corruption might upset the game for Congress. The grand old party has freshly emerged “clean” in the wake of the shocking 2G verdict, which held no one guilty, and particularly gave a clean chit to former PM Manmohan Singh.
However, the guilty verdict for Lalu Yadav restores faith in the Indian institution as the series of acquittals in landmark cases that had shaped the corruption narrative in the past few years had challenged the very idea of institutional accountability.
While the quantum of punishment will be announced in January, the optics of Lalu Yadav spending the New Year in jail might send out ripples of disruption in the UPA camp. Will the newly anointed president of the Congress, riding the moral high ground during the Gujarat Assembly elections campaign, distance himself from the Lalu camp, given the implications of the fodder scam verdict?
Or, will “coalition compulsions” bind Rahul Gandhi to forge pragmatic ties with the new crop of RJD leadership, embodied in Tejashwi Yadav, based on so called secular politics and history of unflinching loyalty from the RJD towards the Congress?
