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Pratibha Patil, Voting President, criminal backgroun

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“Every saint has a past and every sinner a future”- Oscar Wilde

In these columns, I wrote a serious of articles under the title “Why should we have a President with criminal antecedents?” last week. Eminent journalists like Mr Arun Shourie, Dr Nalapat, Mrs Sandhya Jain and many others have documented the criminal antecedents of Mrs Pratibha Patil. This glorious candidate specially chosen by Mrs Sonia Gandhi (spiritual and political successor of Mahatma Gandhi) is portrayed by the Congress Party (which only means Mrs Sonia Gandhi) as being in the sacred line of Mrs Kasturba Gandhi, totally dedicated to the cause of women"s welfare and emancipation.

In order to highlight this Sonia Congress Himalayan truth, Mr Manohar Lal Sharma, a brave and patriotic advocate has filed a PIL petition on behalf of more than one billion helpless people of India, in the Supreme Court. In that PIL petition, he has alleged that Mrs Pratibha Patil, one of the noblest women in our history so graciously put up by another all time great woman, was an undischarged insolvent relating to the Sant Muktai Sugar Factory set up by Mrs Pratibha Patil at Jalgaon against which a loan of Rs 17.7 crore was due as on 1994 when she was a part of it.

The Supreme Court will hear today the PIL petition seeking to cancel the nomination paper of UPA-left Presidential nominee Mrs Pratibha Patil alleging irregularities committed by her and her family members in a cooperative bank and a sugar mill.

The PIL seeking a direction against Mrs Pratibha Patil to continue as the Presidential candidate was mentioned yesterday before a Bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and P K Balasubramanyan, which agreed to give it an urgent hearing.

The PIL conteneded that Mrs Pratibha Patil comes under the ambit of serious offence of criminal breach of trust as the M/S Pratibha Mahila Sahkari Bank belonging to her and her family members had collected Rs 4,556 (a days" salary) from 30 employees each for the Kargil war victims but allegedly embezzled the entire amount and did not deposit it with the National Defence Fund.

Mr Manohar Lal Sharma in his PIL petition has requested the Supreme Court to direct the Election Commission to take an affidavit in detail from Mrs Pratibha Patil in regard to the alleged incidents/ irregularities relating to M/S Pratibha Mahila Sahkari Bank. Mrs Pratibha Patil was the founder Chairperson, later Director of this Bank for many years and which was finally ordered to closed by the Reserve Bank of India(not mercifully Pakistan or Bangladesh) in 2003. Mr Manohar Lal Sharma has stated in his PIL petition that the above true facts have been concealed by the Presidential Candidate by Mrs Pratibha Patil. She has done it despite her being aware of the fact that the irregularities committed by her are in gross violation of several legal and constitutional provisions.

The advocate has raised vital and unassailable questions about the legal fact as to whether an undischarged insolvent and a person facing charge of section 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust) and 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker...) of IPC can every be made eligible for election as President of India.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the Congress Party and the other political parties in the UPA coalition have indeed played a cruel joke on our great Nation by proposing a candidate based on the CTO principle, C standing for criminal and callous, T for terrible and treacherous, and O for odious ,odourous and Offal. In order to bring out this fact in the highest court of Law, Mr Manohar Lal Sharma has filed a PIL in the Supreme Court of India and all the citizens of India (excepting in the abodes of the politically guilty like Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Mr Karunanitdhi and their party men, and of course all the communists of India) are in a state of delirious joy and fully behind Mr Manohar Lal Sharma for having spoken out in the Supreme Court of India on their behalf.

To quote the words of Dr Kalyanaraman on the unapproachable and impeccable credentials of Mrs Pratibha Patil (PP) for the highest Office of the President of India: “PP Insolvent? PP who founded the M/S Pratibha Mahila Sahkari Bank ? What a joke.? Everything goes in the criminalised polity. Declaring insolvency may be a judicial stratagem to escape from the clutches of the law, even if it involves charges of criminal breach of trust under Sections 406 and 409 of IPC. After all, the law grinds slowly. I hope the court will not declare it a stale case as was done in the case of a false affidavit about educational qualifications. Who knows? Insolvency declaration may be the order of the day. Since the law is an ass, and moves slowly, it is likely that the term of the next president PP may be over before the case gets disposed of. Make it stale. Maybe, the case will be disposed of tomorrow as a hot potato citing some procedural flaws in filing petitions.
How can a hot potato be stale? Sorry for mixing metaphors. It will be a criminal joke played on the entire nation, excepting for the oratorical flourishes of criminalised polity hailing womens" empowerment. Jai maataa, Jai INDIAN PENAL CODE(IPC)”

The Congress Party is proposing the name of Mrs Pratibha Patil only to break the record of Mr Nixon who was forced to resign on account of the Watergate Scandal. This was an incident that occurred during the administration of President Richard Milhouse Nixon that eventually ended the Presidency of Mr Nixon and brought about a serious governmental crisis in the United States. This scandal hit at the very core of the democratic processes of the United States. About the Watergate Scandal a journalist wrote with telling precision: “Sex, drugs, money, power, you name it and there is a scandal for it. But if you look back, you will see that amongst all the scandals, Watergate was among the worst. The Watergate scandal had everything from Nixon disgracing the presidency by lying to the country and abusing his power, to his committees being involved in illegal acts and a big cover up; all leading to little side roads of corruption and lies. Watergate is by far one of the worst presidential scandals in the history of the United States.”

Mrs Prathiba Patil, nominated for the post of President by the "UPA-Left" combine, has earned the dubious distinction of being the "Unprecedented Presidential Nominee". A series of allegations from criminal abetting to financial irregularities not withstanding, she is now facing a Public Interest Litigation filed by advocate Mr Manohar Lal Sharma in the Honorable Supreme Court seeking cancellation of her nomination on the grounds of alleged financial irregularities. Also one Mr Sanjay Tiwari Ujjala on behalf of his NGO, Indraprastha People, has filed a petition in the Delhi High court seeking the cancellation of Mrs Pratibha Patil"s nomination on the grounds that she is holding an "Office of Profit", as she is still holding the post of Managing Trustee of the Shram Sadhna Bombay Trust at Government Colony, Bandra East, Mumbai.

No candidate for the Office of President of India after our Independence has ever demeaned and degraded himself by participating in a partisan political rally organised by a political party for its own narrow political purposes. Two days ago, Mrs Prathiba Patil demeaned herself in Chennai by attending and witnessing a women"s rally artificially organised by the DMK / DPA. While speaking at that political function, she claimed that all the allegations thrown on her were are malicious and baseless and denied everything. As all the allegations have been made with documentary evidences, mere verbal denial by her by a mofussil politician will not cut much ice and an authentic proof is needed in order to ascertain as to whether the allegations are baseless or not. As a nominee for the Constitutionally highest post of the Country, she owes a moral responsibility to the people of this country to come out clean and assure the people of her innocence and clean image.

Mr B R Haran has rightly summed up:” Just because the "numbers" appear to be on her side, it doesn"t mean that she is vested with prerogative to treat all the responsible allegations made against her with utmost contempt. Even though she was emboldened by the support of the UPA-Left combine, she must have undergone a trauma in the last few days and now, she has got an opportunity in the form of the two cases filed at the Supreme Court and the High Court through which, she can either prove her innocence or she can withdraw her nomination. But, while going through the various allegations leveled on her, it is most unlikely that she could come out clean. So, one hopes that better sense would prevail on her to withdraw from the race for presidency irrespective of what the Courts might decide on the two petitions.”

Nothing can destroy our Government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its callous disregard for the charter of its own existence. Perhaps Justice Brandeis in his famous OLMSTEAD VS UNITED STATES case had the Sonia UPA Government in view when he declared in 1928 “ Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If the Government becomes a law breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites everyman to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy”.

V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.

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