How PM, Rajnath and Jaitley are diverging in their statements
On March 22, 2017, while speaking in Parliament, home minister Rajnath Singh insisted that the Prime Minister had never blamed Pakistan's ISI agency for the Kanpur train accident. He said: "The entire Kanpur train incident is being probed by the NIA and the investigation is not yet complete."
When Congress MP Digvijaya Singh said the Prime Minister had already named the ISI as being behind the incident, the home minister countered him and said the PM never named the spy agency. Defending PM Narendra Modi, Singh said it is public knowledge that the neighbouring country is behind a number of terrorist incidents happening in India.
On February 24, 2017, Modi was addressing an election rally in Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh. This place is close to the India-Nepal border. In the rally, Modi talked about the issue of derailment of the Indore-Patna Express in Kanpur Dehat district on November 20. He said: “The Kanpur rail accident in which hundreds of people were killed was a conspiracy and the conspirators carried it out sitting across the border... Gonda is adjoining Nepal.”
But the question is that when the probe is still on, how did the Prime Minister come to know that it was a conspiracy hatched from across the border? And when he was talking about "conspirators carried it out sitting across the border", if he wasn't talking about ISI-backed Pakistani terror outfits, then whom was he talking about?
Statements of the Prime Minister and home minister clearly suggest that there are big holes between both their positions on the issue. The PM might have been briefed by the NIA, which may not be in the knowledge of Rajnath Singh. Or the PM’s statement is based only on the conventional wisdom i.e. that all terror attacks in India emanate from Pakistan.
But this is not the first time when the PM and his top ranking colleagues have differed on an issue or spoken in different languages. On November 9, 2016, in his speech to the nation, Modi said: "There may be some who, for some reason, are not able to deposit their old 500 or 1,000 rupee notes by December 30, 2016. They can go to specified offices of the Reserve Bank of India up to March 31, 2017, and deposit the notes after submitting a declaration form."
Subsequently, the government altered that deadline. On March 21, 2017, the top law officer of the government, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, told the Supreme Court: “There is no question of the PM’s speech… if PM says March 31, 2017, but the law says December 30, 2016, the law will prevail over the PM. Let’s be clear about that first.”
The top law official of the government says, don't go by the Prime Minister's word and go by law. Interestingly, the law was altered by none other than the present government itself. And, it was done after the PM's speech and hence critics made a mockery of it.
 |
| The question is that when the probe is still on, how did the Prime Minister come to know that the Kanpur accident was a conspiracy hatched from across the border? Photo: India Today |
March 21, 2017, the day the AG told the apex court that law matters not the PM’s word, another colleague of the Prime Minister was speaking in a different language in Parliament. Finance minister Arun Jaitley was answering a question from Congress's MV Rajeev Gowda on black money. He said "no one definitive estimation can be made at this stage (about black money)".
Today's finance minister may not have a clue about the estimated black money but Modi once had a very firm idea. On November 7, 2013, as a PM candidate of the BJP, Modi had said at a rally that the "Centre has not done anything to bring back illegal money. If we bring back black money, each citizen can get Rs 15-20 lakh."
A week later, on July 15, 2013, Modi said: "If all the black money stashed abroad was brought back in India, each poor person would have Rs 3 lakh in his pocket. An average family of five will have Rs 15 lakh. But will the Congress make an effort to do that? No."
This clearly suggests that Modi had a fair idea of the amount of black money though his finance minister is still trying to make his own estimate.
All three examples suggest that either Modi or his ministerial colleagues are not on the same page or have divergent views or stand on particular issues. Three top colleagues of the Prime Minister spoke differently from Modi in 24 hours.
There is a convention in governments using the Westminster System that members of the cabinet must publicly speak in one language, even if they do not privately agree with them. That seems to not be happening here.