Private citizen, public concern

How much midnight oil has Haryana been burning, over private citizen Robert Vadra’s alleged land deals should make for an interesting read. There is absolutely nothing diabolical about the fact that the previous government of Bhupinder Singh Hooda tried tooth and nail to indict Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law but as everyone knows that righteousness has long hands it may just be time that Haryana will extinguish the flames on this heartburn of many years. Even if Mohan Lal Khattar may have said that the law will take its own course, in hindsight the first time chief minister would know that in implicating Robert Vadra lies the prime minister Narendra Modi’s personal interest. If his election campaign can be suggestive of his personality traits, Modi is certainly not the sort of person who would let the matter be closed with a whimper. He’ll hound Vadra to the extent he may find it unnerving and the first results of it are anyway out in the open. Congress, which doesn’t even have the numbers and has been a prisoner of its own deceit in political circles has faced so much embarrassment that it practically has nowhere to go. To say that Priyanka Gandhi, Vadra’s wife and daughter of Sonia Gandhi has not entered the political arena because of the corruption charges levelled against her husband is like identifying between chalk and cheese.  Vadra must be nursing a grouse as even today there has been no show of public support by the first family of Indian politics. 

Sonia Gandhi may have gone to Vadra’s residence at Lodhi Estate to have a conversation but nobody can deny that there must have been no nice words exchanged. Conspicuous by his presence at the Vadra household, Rahul Gandhi has lent further fire to an already enraged Vadra who angrily pushed away a reporter’s microphone on Saturday. This lead to a BJP spokesperson, seen on national television to issue a statement saying that India was no longer a banana republic which was ruled by the Gandhi family. Another senior leader from the saffron party has demanded that Vadra’s SPG cover be withdrawn. Technically, SPG guards have been provided to high risk individuals by the police and local government and depending on threat perception the tiers of Z+, Z, Y and X are provided. Vadra, whose name has now emerged in the CAG report on corruption charges related to land deals certainly does not face any security conundrums as much as the whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka does. Khemka, who was transferred 44 times in a career span of 22 years, apparently needs much more security after he also started receiving threat calls from unknown people who warned him of dire consequences if he did not desist. Congress should let go of Robert Vadra to save itself from a political exigency which is brewing!