The Vigilance Organization Kashmir has booked the former Congress minister Taj Mohi-ud-Din in a land grab case in Shopian district of South Kashmir.The investigation has established that the officials of the Revenue Department have illegally made insertions, corrections and tempering in revenue records to confer undue benefit upon the beneficiary Taj Mohi-ud-Din. A fictitious record was prepared to pave the way for Taj to encroach upon the adjacent forest land illegally. However the big question is the progress of the case. Will investigation be taken to its logical conclusion? Unlikely. So far, it has never happened that a high profile politician or a bureaucrat in the state has gone to jail for corruption. Or been convicted in a case. This is unlike what happens in the rest of the country. Even the powerful individuals in the country find themselves arraigned at the bar of public opinion when they are found to be involved in corrupt practices. True, the cases of political corruption drag endlessly in courts. But many a time this doesnt protect the political
Taj is not the only one slapped with a corruption case in the case. Earlier, many of his colleagues in Congress have faced such cases but none has so far come to any harm as a result. In fact, all of them have prospered since and gone on to occupy more responsible positions in the party. Same goes for the other
Truth is when it comes to graft or even immoral behaviour for that matter, the politicians, bureaucrats and even security brass in the state enjoy the benefit of a different yardstick. Their malfeasance, indiscretions, aberrations, are forgiven for their alleged role in holding Kashmir for
J&K operates in a detached world of its own, insulated from the play of democracy in the mainland India. As politicians and other state functionaries in India find themselves cornered over allegations of corruption and their tribe feels the heat of the growing anti-corruption movement, politicians in Kashmir need hardly to bother. For corruption in Kashmir, while it may be rampant, doesnt become a political issue. The discourse here runs so obsessively around the ongoing conflict and the politics of it that nothing outside it seems to exist. In fact, there is an entire aspect of public life which is not a part of political conscience in the
This reality has rubbed off on the institutional capacities of the state to tackle political corruption. One can hardly cite a high-profile instance where anti-corruption bodies in the state have successfully pinned down the guilt of a senior
Politicians in the state, as a result, feel little sense of accountability to the people of the state – or should we say people here don’t make any such demand from them. Corruption is generally seen as a rightful part of political life or people are too cynical of the systems ability to force accountability to make such demand. This has generated an unnatural situation. The result is that we end up getting the governments which have the luxury of operating in a world free of sufficient checks and balances. And hence there is an inherently less than adequate need to perform and be The result has been the growth of a polity that has found in this mindset an escape from accountability. No government feels itself obliged to perform. And corruption which is so rife gets little attention beyond a lip service.
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