Most people would be inclined to believe Raja. He should know. After all, he was a cabinet minister during the NDA regime as well and must have been privy to all the wrong-doings of that period as well. But Raja, a lawyer by profession, should be aware that one wrong does not justify another. A murderer, when trapped, cannot get away from the long arm of justice by claiming that someone else has committed murder as well and that that person was still at large. This is precisely what Raja is now trying to do.

Raja’s new disclosure not only opens a closet full of skeletons,
it also opens up a Pandora’s Box of questions.

When the telecom ministry of the NDA regime was perpetrating its Rs 1,00,000 crore fraud on the Nation, what were Raja and his other cabinet colleagues from the DMK, including Murasoli Maran and T R Balu doing? Why did not any of them protest? Why did they not at least raise the issue at a cabinet meeting? Why did they not walk out of the NDA? By keeping silent, were they not guilty of abetting the multi-crore scam against the Nation? Or were they all so busy with their own scams that they just did not notice an "insignificant" Rs 1 lakh crore scam perpetrated by their own cabinet colleague? Were they all impervious to the concepts of collective responsibility and collective liability which are the basis of the Indian government’s functioning?




Will Raja claim that he and his DMK colleagues in the cabinet were kept in the dark at that time? If so, why did they not protest the lack of transparency in the NDA regime?




Raja’s DMK party was part of the NDA till December 2003. From the very first day of UPA governance, i.e. from May, 2004 onwards, a DMK member has been handling the Telecom ministry – first Dayanidhi Maran and then Raja himself. Why did not either of them raise the issue during the five long years they have held office?




By keeping the fraud under wraps for so long, were they not culpable as accessories after the fact?




If Raja had not been cornered by the ongoing 2G spectrum scam and the CBI investigations into it, if Raja had not been pressured by the widespread criticism he is being subjected to and the persistent demand for his resignation, would he have made this sensational disclosure of a huge fraud committed by his ministry even earlier? In other words, if Raja had been allowed to defraud the Nation of Rs 1 lakh crores without any questions being asked, would he not have kept silent about the earlier fraud of equal value?




Does Raja not care one bit about the Nation and the innocent people who reposed trust in him and voted him to power? Does he have no qualms at all about the astronomical sums of the people’s money that he and his predecessors have defrauded? Does he not suffer from any prick of conscience?

As I have said earlier, the whole scenario is extremely sordid. It is very apparent that the sole purpose of the DMK leaders to be in power politics is to loot the Nation. The sooner their allies, the media, the people of Tamil Nadu and the people of India as a whole realize this and throw them out, the better it would be for all.