Facing Corruption

Navi Mumbai's oldest mandal highlights corruption menace


Shivchhaya Mitra Mandal in Turbhe, the oldest in the settlement city, is celebrate its 42nd Ganeshotsav by focus on the theme of growing dishonesty. The thousands who have been queuing up to catch a glimpse of the 12-ft-tall idol also get a glimpse of quite a few panel that pictorially highlight various controversy, including the Adarsh swindle, the Commonwealth Games, the 2G telecom swindle and Coalgate..

"We try to underline socially momentous themes for the do good to of devotee. This time, we are showcasing how India is decayed due to a choice of attractive fraud scandal. In the latest Coalgate scam, it is difficult to even count the number of 'zeroes' in the corruption figure," said Ankush Vaiti, secretary of the mandal.

commonly known as Turbhecha Raja or Navi Mumbaicha Raja, the hero is fashion by Santosh Kambli, who also design the iconic Lalbaugcha Raja in Mumbai.

In the history few years, several of the theme at this pandal have been subject matter like women's empowerment and the human rights and duty of citizens. This year's theme of forthrightness has been bring to life by art director Nilesh Choudhary.

"When devotee finish their darshan are about to step out of the pandal, mandal volunteers tell them not to connect in any form or dishonesty and help bring back the blond, magnificent past of our country," added Vaiti.

Pandal dates back to 1971

Shivchhaya Mitra Mandal was recognized method back in 1971, just when the city of Navi Mumbai was created by its planners, Cidco.

Earlier, the idol used to be kept at Turbhe Naka, near a stone quarry. However, later the pandal was shift to its current site near Tubhe bus storehouse as a jump over was build at Turbhe Naka.

Dattushet Patil, president of the mandal, said a funfair planned at the venue is a big magnetism and nearly 12 lakh people go to it every year.
 

Bhopal activist targets Kudankulam plant


A tragedy at Kudankulam Nuclear control set will be more caustic than the Bhopal gas calamity of 1984, assumed Satinath Sarangi, one of the influential of the society looking for honesty for dead of the Bhopal natter misfortune. He was cry to TOI after interact with student at the Park Group of institution on Wednesday.

Sarangi claim that influence foliage in India together with persons in Tarapur in Maharashtra and Rawatbhata in Rajasthan were between the the pits in the world with respect to safety measures. Researchers from other country retreat these plant life to culture how not to run them, he said. He new that in the case of the proposed Kudankulam plant power, the nuclear establishment was still to reveal safety measures.

a variety of administration agency have been suppress problems they have created in areas nearby the nuclear authority plant life, he said. waves leaks are ordinary in the vegetation but the government has not yet conduct a revise on the strength issues cause by power plantsattainment even basic in sequence on the number of people la-di-dah by radiation in areas near nuclear power plants is close to not possible, he added. hospital do not give in order and even conduct survey in villages in the surrounding area are not allowed. Therefore, the dangerous belongings that the power plants can cause are not yet familiar, he said.

Sarangi also strut about the plight of the dead of Bhopal calamity. He said the regime has absolutely neglected the needs of thousands of those who were blown up by the gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal three decades ago. Thousands of kilo grams of chemical waste have been covert in and in the region of the areas, sully subversive water sources and create staid health application. Birth defect, cancers and disease affecting the liver and kidneys are frequent in Bhopal, Sarangi said. To steer comprehensible of corresponding position the Kudankulam lodge must be stopped up, he said.

Actor Rahul Bose also interacted with the students and spine about youth travels that target sleaze and other serious issue.
 

Navi Mumbai's oldest mandal highlights corruption menace


Shivchhaya Mitra Mandal in Turbhe, the oldest in the satellite city, is celebrating its 42nd Ganeshotsav by focusing on the theme of rising corruption. The thousands who have been queuing up to catch a glimpse of the 12-ft-tall idol also get a glimpse of several panels that pictorially highlight various controversies, including the Adarsh scam, the Commonwealth Games, the 2G telecom scam and Coalgate.

"We try to underline collectively considerable themes for the do good to of devotee This time, we are showcasing how India is decomposed due to an assortment of high-profile fraud scandals. In the latest Coalgate scam, it is easier said than done to even count the number of zero in the vice build" said Ankush Vaiti, bureau of the mandal.

universally known as Turbhecha Raja or Navi Mumbaicha Raja, the idol is sculpt by Santosh Kambli, who also designs the iconic Lalbaugcha Raja in Mumbai.

In the past few years, some of the themes at this pandal have been subject like women's empowerment and the human rights and duty of populace. This year's topic of bribery has been bring to being by art director Nilesh Choudhary.

what time devotee finish their darshan are regarding to measure out of the pandal, mandal volunteers tell them not to slot in in any structure or corruption and help bring back the golden, splendid past of our homeland," added Vaiti.

Pandal dates back to 1971

Shivchhaya Mitra Mandal was established way back in 1971, just when the city of Navi Mumbai was created by its planners, Cidco.

Earlier, the statue used to be kept at Turbhe Naka, in the vicinity of a stone quarry. However, anon the pandal was shift to its current scene near Tubhe bus depot as a flyover was built at Turbhe Naka.

Dattushet Patil, president of the mandal, said a funfair controlled at the site is a big repulsion and nearly 12 lakh people attend it every year.
 

BJP threatens to scrap FDI in multi-brand retail if it comes to power


BJP on Wednesday issue a oblique danger that it may bit the conclusion to permit distant shortest savings in multi-product sell but it come to muscle, prompt the administration to rush to assure potential investors.

"The BJP is opposed to FDI in multi-brand retail. It is not in the interest of farmers and diminutive retailers," BJP's chief presenter, Ravi Shankar Prasad, said at a meeting of the party's national exclusive, accumulation, "When we come to power, the consequences will follow."

ask if BJP would undo the government's decision or scale down the cap, Prasad said, "Wait for our manifesto...51% or no per cent."

business and hard work Minister Anand Sharma reacted sharply at a late sundown presser, threatening the main unfriendliness that no government could illogically reverse such decisions without inviting legal corollary "They cannot legally reverse a resolution We have signed bilateral investment shelter pacts with a large number of countries which will all get invoked," Sharma said, "I am dismayed at what they are trying to do. They want to confuse and scare away investors."

The minister also said, "Those who will come and invest in India will be doing so in comeback to present policy of the Republic of India. Policymaking is the prerogative of the elected government of the day. investor will come behind suitable FIPB scrutiny."

Sharma's clarification came just hours after BJP for the first time drop a lane hint that it may review Congress-led UPA's major policy initiative it has been opposing strongly.

Retailers Stay Mum

BJP has, however, maintain all along that it would not allow global supermarket in states where it was in power. The minister recalled that the Opposition party had supported FDI in the sector when it was in administration "The BJP-led NDA administration had prepared a Cabinet note allowing FDI in multi-brand name retail when it was in power. They are charming in the worst kind of doublespeak and double values," Sharma said. Prasad, however, said BJP may not stick to its earlier undertake of 26% FDI in the sector. "That was 2004. It is eight years old," he said.


Retailers refused to be drawn into the spat. "I have not heard or read the statement, so I am unable to make any comment," said Bharti Walmart MD and CEO Raj Jain.

Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani refused to comment on politics.

Earlier, the BJP spokesman also rejected claims that there were difference within NDA on the issue. Prasad claimed that BJP and Akali Dal, which was reportedly in favour of FDI in multi-brand retail, were on the same page on the issue. He said he had met Punjab's Deputy Chief Minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, and that the two parties were one on the issue.

Badal had said Akali Dal was opposed to the way the upheaval had been bring in. He said he had printed to the border line cordial the judgment on FDI but added that the management should have occupied the stockholders into assurance. The prime minister should not usher in reforms just because Walmart wants it, he said.

However, BJP claimed that Akali Dal had only said the issue should be discussed with farmers.

Sharma, on his part, branded Akali Dal's latest statements as political posturing and said he had both written and spoken to Badal. "Even two days before the Cabinet was to take a decision, I spoke to Mr Badal," he said. At BJP's meet, party president Nitin Gadkari also asked party cadres to get ready for the polls.

"The fatherland is on the perimeter of show a discrepancy. election container spin away from home any moment," he unambiguous. narration UPA as a sinking distribute, he said, "People are disheartened. The aam aadmi (average citizen) is reeling over the force of outlay enhance, changed outline, arrogance and vulgar lack of awareness."
 

How Sonia Gandhi was persuaded to back reforms


 It had been a brutal August for the Congress party: economic growth was wilting, the monsoon rains were failing and the opposition had it cornered on yet another corruption scandal.

In step Sonia Gandhi to breathe life keen on the self-worth of the judgment party's lawmaker, exhort them at a get-together to "stand up and fight, fight with a sense of rationale and struggle violently". It was a gorgeously forward speech from the by and large extreme matriarch of a rule that has ruled India for largely of its post-independence era.

And thus far few at the assembly were alert that just a week prior she had perform an even more dramatic U-turn, conflicting to a raft of economic reform that would be unveiled on September 13 as well as 14.

Gandhi has no representative supervision post, but as legislative body do president and torchbearer of India's widely revered first family, she has the last word on big guidelines issues: and used for her, societal good has until the end of time come ahead of liberalising the nation.

nevertheless, more than a dozen officials and party leaders close to the secretive outer circle of the Italian-born manager told Reuters that Gandhi was positive of the could do with for grave action to turn aside a duplicate of the crisis that took India to the brink of bankruptcy in 1991.

"This time there was a very grim setting," said Rashid Kidwai, a Sonia Gandhi biographer who was given an account of the arguments made over weeks by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his new backing minister in front the closed doors of colonial-era regime bungalows in New Delhi and even on a plane journey.

"It's not that she wanted to go for all this, but it was made very clear to her that, if she didn't, there would be far more dire penalty," Kidwai said.

Sources said the trigger for the reform campaign in Asia's third-largest nation came with the return of P. Chidambaram as finance minister on August 1.

An well-expressed Harvard-educated technocrat in the midst of a track record as a reformer, he replace Pranab Mukherjee, a left-of-centre Congress stalwart who had consistently warned Gandhi against radical reforms that could cost the party votes.

"Pranab was from the old discipline of Indian politics," said a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The PM and the investment minister had to persuade Gandhi that good economics was good politics."

Her compliance in the end led to this month's "big bang Friday" as, a day after taking an axe to expensive economic patronage on diesel, the path announce that the trade present would be disengage to native superstore chains and the bar on foreign investment in both airlines and broadcasters would be lifted.

In sum, these were the most wide-ranging restructuring since Singh took office in 2004 and - in the breach of 48 hours - they dispel the image of a prime rector who was losing his mojo as India's high-trajectory spiralling faltered.

A RELUCTANT REFORMER

However, insiders say Gandhi remains instinctively wary of trade and industry liberalization and circumference the chart deficit. For months, she had alleged out against cutting fuel subsidy that are expected at the poor and the country's rural majority, fearing the impact on the Congress party's fortune.

She only agreed when Singh and Chidambaram spelled out that new growth generated by reforms and improved investor sentiment would have a trickle-down effect and provide funds for welfare spending in time for elections due by mid-2014.

She only agreed when Singh and Chidambaram spelled out with the purpose of new augmentation generated by reform and better shareholder emotion would boast a drip outcome and provide finances for welfare expenditure in time for elections due by mid-2014.

Reuters review more than 30 letters written by Gandhi to the prime vicar and US diplomatic cables on the loose by WikiLeaks that portray her as passionate about social issues, and attached to protecting the poor.

That means the sudden burst of reforms could be cut short if Gandhi - who Forbes magazine ranks as the world's sixth most powerful woman - sees no benefits for the rural poor on whom her party relies for votes.

Indeed, party sources said she will now focus on passing a bill on universal food security in December, a populist plan that would cost billions of dollars at a time when her government is under intense pressure to rein in spending.

"She just wants enough budgetary resources available to finance her welfare schemes," said Swapan Dasgupta, a prominent journalist and commentator who leans towards the opposition.

"She has never spoken about reforms. What she has ready is make administration think of reform as a low precedence and a taking sides burden - she has entrenched that mindset in the party."

 

Selection & Composition of Lokpal


The Lokpal Act should lay down an objective and transparent criteria such as competence, experience, qualification etc for the selection of candidates for appointment to the Lokpal. The selection committee should be broad-based consisting of members of the executive, leaders of parliament, members of the higher judiciary, jurists and academicians. The search committee constituted by the selection committee should also be broad-based. Composition: Apart from the chairperson, there should be 10 members in the Lokpal. Out of these four shall be judicial members, three can be persons with administrative and civil service backgrounds and the other three should be drawn from fields such as law

 Jurisdiction

While corruption in high places has to be tackled on a priority basis, for the ordinary citizen, it is the corruption faced by them in daily life and in dealings with public authorities that also needs to be urgently taken up. Much of this sphere of corruption falls in dealings with authorities at the states-level. The Lok Ayuktas set up on the lines of the Lokpal should bring all state government employees, local bodies and the state corporations under their purview. Further, a citizen’s grievances redressal machinery that we have proposed be set up separately, should address all grievances regarding delivery of basic services and entitlements for citizens.

a) Prime Minister: The Prime Minister should be brought under the purview of the Lokpal with adequate safeguards. The office of Prime Minister along with all public servants was brought under the purview of Lokpal by the V.P. Singh Government in 1989 and in all subsequent draft legislations, the Prime Minister has been placed under the Lokpal. In fact a Parliamentary Standing Committee headed by Shri Pranab Mukherjee had made precisely this point while examining the 2001 Lokpal Bill. For the first time since 1989, this government presiding over a large number of scams, is unwilling to ensure accountability of the highest executive office. Clearly, all public servants of the Union Government within the definition in the Prevention of Corruption Act, which includes the Prime Minister, must fall within the purview of the Lokpal.

b) Judiciary: The judiciary too needs to be brought under scrutiny and made more accountable, and the stringent requirement of prior permission and sanction from the Chief Justice to file FIRs and investigate corruption charges has resulted in a de facto immunity to them. But the proposals to bring them under Lokpal encroach upon the constitutionally guaranteed independence of the Supreme Court. If a mere allegation of mala fide is enough for the Lokpal to start an inquiry into the actions of judges, it may not allow judges to act without fear.

Complaints about corruption against the judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts should be handled by a separate body, the National Judicial Commission. This Commission should take care of the appointments in the higher judiciary and oversee their conduct and enquire into the complaints of corruption. For this, necessary legislation will have to be passed. The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010 is woefully inadequate for this purpose.

c) Members of Parliament: At present, the scrutiny of the conduct of Members of Parliament with regard to any corrupt practice is weak and unsatisfactory. For Members of Parliament, Article 105 of the Constitution provides protection with regard to freedom of speech and voting. The real issue is how to ensure that this freedom and protection does not extend to acts of corruption by Members of Parliament. This can be done through an amendment to Article 105, on the lines recommended by the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution. Alternatively, if feasible, there can be legislation that if any Member of Parliament indulges in any act of corruption that motivates his or her action in Parliament (voting, speaking etc.), then this act falls within the purview of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the IPC.
 

Corruption in India


This article on Corruption in India relies on a poor legal and a weak statistical base relying on mere opinions and impressions in the website www.ipaidabribe.com. Any one who visits this website can make out that neither there is accountability of the person who reports a bribe nor there is any sort of verification such as voter's ID or driving license number or ration card number or any such thing provided. Also there is no punitive clause for those who make a fake allegation. The website just asks to mention the Amount of bribe, City, Date paid, Office or Department and the Name of the Transaction towards which the bribe was paid. This does not stand a legal standing since the website hides more than what it reveals. In addition, the author has not considered the other three aspects "I did not pay a bribe", "I did not have to pay a bribe", "I don't want to pay a bribe" which also influences 'corruption'. Further, it is not the mean corruption which counts, since mean is influenced by extreme values. It is the 'modal' corruption which counts.

This comment does not mean that there is no corruption. It only means that the researcher needs to conduct a primary survey for obtaining information on the transaction costs. This vetting is crucial before totally believing the information posted on a website.

It is also crucial to note why there is such a great variation for the same operation (i.e. police verification) between the 'estimators' Mean and Median. The author draws no implication from the study. One implication could be to include the modal corruption (after due verification from primary data as suggested) paid as a 'search fee' or 'police verification fee' so that the Police Department gets this payment. Police have to maintain law and order and have other works to do and passport work needs to be accounted and involves a transaction cost which needs to be paid by the seeker. This also brings in accountability so that the seeker can always say that I have paid the fee and even though this would not guarantee that one would have a zero police verification fee, it brings in greater transparency.
 

A rotten state


INDIANS' irritation over rising dishonesty has reached agitated levels. What folks are calling a “term of scam” include the alleged theft of billions by officials behind last year's Commonwealth games in Delhi; $40 billion in revenues lost as of the warped sale of 2G telecoms licences; and over $40 billion stolen in Uttar Pradesh alone from schemes subsidising food and fuel for the poor.

Foreign businessmen, who have slashed speculation over the past year, rank graft as their biggest annoyance behind appalling infrastructure. Now India's anti-corruption chief have been forced out over, well, corruption (see article).

Graft is hardly new in India: the Bofors scandal bring down the regime in 1989. But convenient seems to be more of it about than ever, if only because India is getting richer fast, and the faster the economy grows, the more chances arise for mind-boggling theft. The government says that in the next five-year plan period, which starts next year, $1 trillion will be spent on roads, railways, ports and so on, with billions more on re-equipping the armed forces and welfare. Add in an insatiable appetite for scarce land, water and reserves and a downpour of bribes is forecast

Some are disposed in the direction of shrug their shoulder. After all, fraud does not give the impression to be stopping India from growing. Yet imagine how much better the country would be doing without it. fraud raises costs not just to Indians, but also to the foreigners whose capital India needs. Thanks in part to those scandals, India's stockmarket was the worst-performing outside the Muslim world over the past year.

To its glory, the management has begin to take action adjacent to powerful individuals. Maharashtra state's chief minister was forced out over a property scandal. Police have quizzed Suresh Kalmadi, the policy-maker who ran the Commonwealth games. Most strikingly, Andimuthu Raja, the cabinet minister who oversaw the 2G telecom licences, was arrested.

A 2005 act open-handed the right to in rank is receive, as are auction for public produce, such as preceding year's useful sale of the 3G telecom variety. expertise is helping. into some states, bid for state convention are being run online, allowing anti-corruption bodies to monitor them. Gujarat does this for all contracts over 500,000 rupees ($11,000). It also puts land files and death certificate online, critical down on lone figure of petty join. Websites, led by ipaidabribe.com, expose the cost of join by publicising the sums exact for nothing from registering a baby to fixing a not working water supply.

The central rule should now realize a plan for a universal, computerised ID method. It would allow benefit payments to be paid into individuals' bank the books, hindering theft by state labour.

Most of all, India must redouble its efforts to liberalise. The status could farm out official odd jobs, cut red gum tie and sell careless and corrupt public firms (why does the government make watches?). For every that the “licence Raj” was hypothetically scrapped two decades ago, it can still take nearly 200 days to get a manufacture sanction and seven existence to close a business. convention are not, by and hefty, deterrents to corruption, but a source of it.
 

A Brief History of Corruption in India


Merely shouting from the house tops that everybody is corrupt creates an atmosphere of corruption. People feel they are in a climate of corruption and they get corrupted themselves.’ The words of Jawaharlal Nehru, spoken shortly after India’s independence from British rule, seem particularly apt given the overtly Gandhian style of today’s anti-corruption crusader, Anna Hazare. But for most Indians, Hazare’s movement has produced few surprises: there is a long-standing popular critique of the country’s apparently growing crisis of corruption that cuts across nearly every strata of society.

Popular resignation about the permanence of corruption is partly explained by the political purchase of ‘corruption’ as an idea and a term. Accusations of corruption have historically been wielded as a political weapon – a means of tarnishing rivals in the right circumstances. During India’s very first General Election in 1951-2, newspapers and party offices, particularly those of the Congress party, were bombarded with allegations about corrupt electoral candidates. The system of food and civil supply was subject to commodity controls and rationing – a legacy of the war years which had generated complex systems of patronage. These involved deeply entrenched black markets in lucrative industrial and agricultural concerns. This was the background to what was later known as ‘Permit-Licence-Quota Raj’ – the linking of business interests with political brokers. It is partly this nexus that underpins the protests in post-liberalization India.

But it wasn’t just the circumstances of war that generated concerns about graft in the 1940s and fifties. More broadly, the problem of corruption seemed to correspond to phases of rapid political transformation. The first, officially coordinated ‘anti-corruption’ drives, described as such, took place under the auspices of provincial Congress governments in the late 1930s, while the British still ruled at India’s centre. The Congress juxtaposed its democratic principles against ‘corrupted’ systems of colonial despotism.

The Congress governments of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh in those years also aimed to project themselves as realistic alternatives to the Raj – regimes which took the notion of ‘public service’ seriously. The Special Police Establishment, which undertook to prosecute (albeit quite ineffectively) instances of government servant corruption, followed from 1941. And in March 1947, on the eve of independence, the Government of India passed the Prevention of Corruption Act. In the wake of Partition’s mass migrations, seizure of evacuee property and mob violence, state governments across India sought to ‘clean up’ their administrations. In Uttar Pradesh, this operation was described by the early 1950s state government as an ‘efficiency drive’ to ‘root out useless officers’. Conveniently, many of them were actual or intending evacuees to Pakistan.

It took a massive (pending) regime transition to initiate official drives for anti-corruption at that time. On the streets too, independence helped to generate citizens’ movements in the late 1940s to protest against corrupt local rationing or police officers. The vernacular and English newspapers, previously muzzled by the British, were replete with corruption scandals, especially those linked to black marketeers. But there was something more profound happening in early postcolonial India, just as there is today. The larger discussions of ‘corruption’ reached to the roots of what Indians thought about the state, and their own sense of national belonging or alienation. The recent criticisms of Anna Hazare bear this out. The writer Arundhati Roy points out the danger of creating another unaccountable anti-corruption ‘oligarchy’. Others argue that Hazare’s proposed Lokpal Bill could jeopardise constitutional protections for disadvantaged communities. Some Dalit organizations fear that Hazare’s Lokpal Bill, the drafting of which has not hitherto involved minority representation, may undermine some structures of reservations. Still others suggest that Anna Hazare’s style, and that of his supporters, smacks of demagoguery and ‘aggressive nationalism’. In some ways, this is business as usual: India has a complex and highly developed system of fundamental rights provisions within its Constitution, and the country is certainly no stranger to vibrant public debate.
 

The Top Scams in India


1) 2G Spectrum Scam

We have had a number of scams in India; but none bigger than the scam involving the process of allocating unified access service licenses. At the heart of this Rs.1.76-lakh crore worth of scam is the former Telecom minister A Raja – who according to the CAG, has evaded norms at every level as he carried out the dubious 2G license awards in 2008 at a throw-away price which were pegged at 2001 prices.

2) Commonwealth Games Scam

Another feather in the cap of Indian scandal list is Commonwealth Games loot. Yes, literally a loot! Even before the long awaited sporting bonanza could see the day of light, the grand event was soaked in the allegations of corruption. It is estimated that out of Rs. 70000 crore spent on the Games, only half the said amount was spent on Indian sportsperson.

The Central Vigilance Commission, involved in probing the alleged corruption in various Commonwealth Games-related projects, has found discrepancies in tenders – like payment to non-existent parties, will-ful delays in execution of contracts, over-inflated price and bungling in purchase of equipment through tendering – and misappropriation of funds.

3) Telgi Scam

As they say, every scam must have something unique in it to make money out of it in an unscrupulous manner- and Telgi scam had all the suspense and drama that the scandal needed to thrive and be busted.

Abdul Karim Telgi had mastered the art of forgery in printing duplicate stamp papers and sold them to banks and other institutions. The tentacles of the fake stamp and stamp paper case had penetrated 12 states and was estimated at a whooping Rs. 20000 crore plus. The Telgi clearly had a lot of support from government departments that were responsible for the production and sale of high security stamps.

4) Satyam Scam


The scam at Satyam Computer Services is something that will shatter the peace and tranquillity of Indian investors and shareholder community beyond repair. Satyam is the biggest fraud in the corporate history to the tune of Rs. 14000 crore.

The company’s disgraced former chairman Ramalinga Raju kept everyone in the dark for a decade by fudging the books of accounts for several years and inflating revenues and profit figures of Satyam. Finally, the company was taken over by the Tech Mahindra which has done wonderfully well to revive the brand Satyam.

5) Bofors Scam


The Bofors scandal is known as the hallmark of Indian corruption. The Bofors scam was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s; when the then PM Rajiv Gandhi and several others including a powerful NRI family named the Hindujas, were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India’s 155 mm field howitzer.

The Swedish State Radio had broadcast a startling report about an undercover operation carried out by Bofors, Sweden’s biggest arms manufacturer, whereby $16 million were allegedly paid to members of PM Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress.

Most of all, the Bofors scam had a strong emotional appeal because it was a scam related to the defense services and India’s security interests.

6) The Fodder Scam

If you haven’t heard of Bihar’s fodder scam of 1996, you might still be able to recognize it by the name of “Chara Ghotala ,” as it is popularly known in the vernacular language.

In this corruption scandal worth Rs.900 crore, an unholy nexus was traced involved in fabrication of “vast herds of fictitious livestock” for which fodder, medicine and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured.


7) The Hawala Scandal

The Hawala case to the tune of $18 million bribery scandal, which came in the open in 1996, involved payments allegedly received by country’s leading politicians through hawala brokers. From the list of those accused also included Lal Krishna Advani who was then the Leader of Opposition.

Thus, for the first time in Indian politics, it gave a feeling of open loot all around the public, involving all the major political players being accused of having accepted bribes and also alleged connections about payments being channelled to Hizbul Mujahideen militants in Kashmir.

8) IPL Scam

Well, I am running out of time and space over here. The list of scandals in India is just not ending and becoming grave by every decade. Most of us are aware about the recent scam in IPL and embezzlement with respect to bidding for various franchisees. The scandal already claimed the portfolios of two big-wigs in the form of Shashi Tharoor and former IPL chief Lalit Modi.

9,10) Harshad Mehta & Ketan Parekh Stock Market Scam
 
 
Support : Sourav Rana@2012