NEW DELHI:As the full ramifications of the Rs 900,000 crore trading in securities have begun unfolding, politicians and their industrialist patrons are now at work trying to put everything at the door of the Finance Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, Their objective is clear, to hush up the controversy over the scam, to use it like a wreckers ball to pull down the standing of the economic ministries, and then to replace them by their erstwhile favorites the financial mountains of the recklessly extravagant 80s.

With the beginning of the monsoon session of Parliament the restoration operation in in full swing A whisper campaign has been started by the restoration brigade along the line that Dr. Singhs liberalization policies and management of the banking sector has brought the party into disrepute. Therefore, he needs to be changed. Some of his party men are often heard making a mockery of his statement that the scam was due to failure of the system. In private gatherings of Congress MPs, accusing fingers are being especially pointed at him.

 Though nobody has announced it yet, it is obvious from a series of behind-the-scene manoeuvres that the restorers of the old order have set their mind on Pranab Mukherjee, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, as Dr. Singhs replacement. Mukherjee, in his 1982-85 stint as Finance Minister, stole the hearts of politically powerful industrialist by introducing the convertibility clause in debenture issues, thus helping high-profile companies to grab large shares of public debt. He was also the architect of the so called NRI investment scheme by which some industrialists could siphon back their own investment into the companies owned by them through the havala route.

An attempt is now under way to get Mukherjee elected to the Rajya Sabha from Haryana in the by elections to the Upper House due in September. Intense lobbying is now going on for Mukherjee to secure the support of Bhajan Lal, the Chief Minister of Haryana. Foremost among the lobbyists is R.K. Dhavans, the newly elected member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC). It may be recalled that both Mukherjee and

Chawan were dropped from power in January 1985, when the late Rajiv Gandhi was elected to power with a resounding majority in the Lok Sabha.

The attempt to bring Mukherjee back to the Rajya Sabha has been going on since last year, when the lobby had put pressure on the Assam Chief Minister, Hiteswar Sakla, to secure a certificate declaring him a resident of the state. It is reported that the attempt failed at the intervention of the Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

The lobby is now tossing around the view that Dr.Singh and his three junior ministers, including Rameswar Thakur, are incapable of handling the affairs of the Finance Minister, rendered murky as they are, by the proliferating discourses in the media of the linkages between the rogue brokers and a section of bankers. Wild charges of involvement of one of the ministers in the scam are being propagated by the lobby, through whispers which are loud enough for the more gullible among media microphone to catch. Interestingly, the lobby is active not only in the Congress. It has got its tentacles spread in the BJP, in Chandra Shekhar’s JP, and in the Left, Political and business interests truly know no ideological barriers.

After Dr.Singh, the lobby’s next target is the RBI Governor, S. Venkitaramanan. The restoration brigades chosen nominee for the prime post, is Gopi K. Arora the Indian executive director on the IMF-Board who had functioned as the Finance Secretary till the end of Rajiv Gandhi’s rule.

Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1992