Sixty Years On, More Sinned Against...

For independent India, this was a first-of-a-kind scandal. Later, of course, it was to become almost a cliche in political life: a chief minister accused of aggrandising himself and his family at public expense. The S.R. Das Commission, tasked to investigate these charges against Punjab chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon, exonerated him in 1964, saying a father could not be held legally responsible for the actions of his grown-up children. But a caveat—that a chief minister could not escape moral responsibility for his children's' actions—was indictment enough. Kairon quit.

He came to be known by the epithet, minister of tele-'phony'. In 2002, a CBI special court sentenced former Union communications minister Sukh Ram to three years RI, and fined him Rs 1 lakh for purchasing poor quality radio system equipment from a company in 1991, causing the public exchequer to suffer losses totalling Rs 1.68 crore. The buzz was that Sukh Ram, under whose bed dhobi bundles of cash were found, was involved in several other deals, but nothing was proved. A senior telecom official, Runu Ghosh, and Hyderabad-based businessman Pataru Rama Rao, were also sentenced to two and three years imprisonment respectively. A tortuous legal battle continues.

Close on the heels of the stock scam came Harshad Mehta's sensational allegation that he had paid Rs 1 crore in cash to the personal secretary of then prime minister Narasimha Rao. He even displayed a suitcase, offering a symbol for venality, but the allegation was never proved. Rao was also embarrassed by the Lakhubhai Pathak cheating scandal. Pickle king Pathak, a UK-based Indian businessman, alleged that he had paid Chandraswami and his associate K.N. Aggarwal alias Mamaji (who were close to Rao) $100,000 in return for a paper pulp supply contract in India, a "promise" that was not kept. Rao and Chandraswami were acquitted of the charges in 2003 due to lack of evidence. Despite this, the case remained a blot on Rao.