This editorial comment has been modified. Please see the clarification at the end.
The monsoon session of Parliament begins on July 21 and the National Democratic Alliance has a crowded slate of legislation demanding urgent attention - the amendments to the land law and the goods and services tax Bill prominent among them. Yet it seems content to let this agenda be hijacked by a controversial businessman - and, since Thursday, a minister whose educational credentials have come under close scrutiny. A gleeful opposition is preparing to stall Parliament, adding another wearying record of unfinished business.
By disgorging scandal-mongering exposes online, Lalit Modi has managed to deflect in irrelevant directions a controversy that casts doubts on the personal conduct of two ranking Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members - External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. A Delhi court's admission of a complaint against discrepancies in Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's educational qualifications has added to the BJP's embarrassment. Bafflingly, Home Minister Rajnath Singh maintains none of the three will be asked to resign for reasons he did not care to elaborate. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley insists that "the government will play by the rule book and we will make sure that the absolute standards of probity are maintained". So far, there has been little evidence of either commitment.
On Lalit Modi, the issue comes down to three questions. One: why Ms Swaraj chose to accede to a query by Keith Vaz, a British member of Parliament, on furnishing Lalit Modi, a fugitive whose Indian passport was revoked and who faces 16 show cause notices from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), with travel documents to go to Portugal. Two, even if Ms Swaraj were to cite grounds of compassion on account of Lalit Modi's need to visit his ill wife, the issue of conflict of interest remains. Ms Swaraj's husband has been Lalit Modi's lawyer for almost a quarter century and her daughter was part of the legal team that represented him in court cases with the ED. Strangely, none of these issues appears to exercise the BJP leadership or the external affairs minister - indeed she is off to Bangkok to attend, of all things, a symposium on Sanskrit. Three, why did Ms Raje vouch for Lalit Modi for a UK residency permit in 2011, by which time he had already left the country, and add a written stipulation that this be done without the knowledge of the Indian authorities? This even as details of their close business relations - one of India's worst-kept secrets anyway - appear on a daily basis.
As for Ms Irani, questions about her qualifications arose almost as soon as her ministerial appointment was announced last year, without any credible clarifications. This loud silence from the ruling party is only playing into the hands of a feckless opposition and arming it with the weapons to disrupt Parliament. Yet some credible action, including some resignations, will allow the BJP to move beyond this din and get on with the critical business of legislation in Parliament.
CLARIFICATION
This editorial comment had wrongly mentioned that Ms Sushma Swaraj's husband has been Lalit Modi's lawyer for almost a half century., which has been corrected. The error is regretted.
