If anyone still has doubts about the speed and effect with which the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has of late been responding to external developments affecting the government’s reputation, last week’s developments should have set them at rest. On Thursday morning, The Times of India carried a report that quoted a draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAGI) on the manner in which the government had allocated coal blocks resulting in undue gains of over Rs 10.6 lakh crore for those who were allotted mines.
Parliament was in session and the government came under intense attack from the Opposition political parties. In the past, under a different dispensation in the PMO, such an attack would have been allowed to go virtually unchallenged for several days. Not any longer. By the afternoon of the same day, the PMO, believe it or not, tweeted sections of a letter that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had received from the CAG, Vinod Rai, a few hours earlier. Those sections quoted the CAG’s observation that the draft report was not similar to the final findings and, therefore, was misleading.
This was an unusual situation. If a report, purportedly produced by an organisation, is leaked and published in a newspaper, who should issue a statement on its veracity? Ideally, that responsibility should vest with the organisation responsible for producing it. But that is not what happened last week. The office of the CAG has not made any public statement on the veracity of the draft report, which is now available on the newspaper’s website as well. Though it may be a constitutional body, it could issue a statement on its own. It is significant that it did not.
More significant is the PMO’s use of a letter from the CAG on the leaked draft report. One, the social media network was used to send out its message without losing time. Two, only select portions of what appeared to be a longish letter were used in the PMO’s reaction. For instance, the CAG’s concern over the leak of its reports did not find any mention in the PMO’s tweets. You could argue that the PMO chose to tweet only those portions that helped clarify that what was published was “misleading”. But why not share the entire letter from the CAG with the media, perhaps later in the day through the traditional methods of communication? Three, was it right to use select portions of a letter from the CAG? Is this the first time that a letter from the head of a constitutional body to the prime minister was used by the government to clarify charges that a draft report had purportedly levelled against it? And was it necessary for the PMO to also clarify that a part of the CAG’s letter is being released after obtain ing his permission? The CAG may well have allowed his letter to be used for any official communication, but sharing that fact would have helped dispel such doubts.
While there can be no dispute over the speed and effect the PMO achieved through those tweets based on the CAG’s letter, the government may have lost an opportunity by completely ignoring what the draft report may have stated. Even if one were to agree with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s startling observation that 90 per cent of the issues tackled in the draft report would be changed in the final version of the report, the PMO could have scored some extra points if it dwelt a bit more on the draft report’s enumeration of the sequence of events pertaining to the allocation of coal blocks.
For instance, the PMO had stated quite categorically that coal blocks should ideally be auctioned. Thanks to this initiative, there is now a law in place that mandates auction of coal blocks. It is a different matter that delays in government decision-making have come in the way of enforcement of the law. If anybody has to be blamed for the coal block allocation mess, it is, therefore, the coal ministry’s insistence on continuing with the allotment system in spite of the law ministry’s advice that the switch to auctions could take place even through an administrative order.
Shibu Soren of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was the coal minister during this period. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to demand his resignation from the ministry after his involvement in a murder case. Thus, the prime minister had to take charge of the coal ministry for some time during this period. It is perhaps this that may have forced the PMO to react with such unprecedented speed, although there are no specific charges against the prime minister. For the PMO, this episode has another lesson. Think twice before letting the prime minister take even temporary charge of a ministry. It is always better to reallocate a ministry, when it falls vacant, to another minister.
