The Lalit Modi-Sushma Swaraj episode is burning up precious legislative time. Swaraj's statement did not clear up the matter. It is not possible to say that her intervention on Modi's behalf to let him travel out of the UK was on humanitarian grounds only. Nor can it be said that she did not help him obtain travel documents. Would she have intervened if the Modi family was not known to her?
She also possibly violated usual procedure by not getting the matter handled by the department concerned, or obtaining the views of her own officers and also that of the finance ministry. At the least, she could have asked Modi to return to India to depose before the Enforcement Directorate.
However the Opposition Congress has to introspect whether these allegations against Swaraj are serious enough and if Modi is such a heinous criminal that the entire parliamentary process should be halted for his sake. The cost to the nation is not the so-called financial cost of lost sessions, but the loss of opportunity and of sending out a message that the Indian state might be becoming ungovernable.
P Datta, Kolkata
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