Nitin Gadkari the present incumbent of BJP President post who was anointed by RSS as their own helmsman to lord over the fortunes of the right wing party proclaimed to be different from left leaning Congress Party, was in the news for wrong reasons. He is alleged to have conspired with Ajit Pawar the nephew of Sharad Pawar who was instrumental in embezzling huge sums of public money under the pretext of irrigation projects. He is a Promoter Director of Purti Group who has varied interests in Sugar, Agro based products, Power etc. This group was alleged to have indulged in land grabbing and there were spurious companies that had invested in this group. Most of these companies were found to be dubious with fictious  addresses and some of them had his personal driver, astrologer as Directors . They were also  alleged to be beneficiaries of his benevolence when he was  Public works Minister under BJP Sena government headed by Manohar Joshi. His friend Sancheti won coal blocks in chattisgarh and he is a party MP. The group which was engaged in infra structure projects issued denials but could not explain as to how they paid interest free loans to Purti Group if not as quid pro quo.

An embarrassed party suddenly woke up that its plank of anti corruption will loose sheen if Gadkari continues at the helm. RSS was also shell shocked although it stood by him fearing the take over of  BJP by Narendra Modi who is becoming a sort of cult figure among all BJP leaders – much against the tradition of BJP which is against any form of hero worship. This time RSS found one of its earliest pracharak  a trained Chartered Accountant Gurumuthi to study the allegations and issue a certificate of conduct to Gadkari. He also dutifully claimed that Gadkari is innocent of any wrong doing attributed to him. All the leaders suddenly acknowledged that their Party President is crystal white and clean as Ganges and called the campaign against him as politically motivated. Gurumurthi for a change chose to write two articles in Indian express – a BJP mouth piece calling the shell companies were infact owned by a Nagpur based businessman Mehta who had made initial investments of 47 crores or so in Purti which investment has been cleared by IT Department. The subsequent investments by the shell companies were also genuine.  When the ownership is known they are no longer shell companies even though he acknowledged that the companies were infact carved out for some reason best known to Mehta and such practices are not uncommon elsewhere in the world.

Gurumurthi has now claimed that he had never given a clean chit to Gadkari and he did not know him. I do not know what transpired in between his columns and the festival of lights when suddenly it dawns on him that defending Gadkari could indeed boomerang in the light of mounting evidences against him.

But his defence was smart. Better than that of Kapil Sibal’s zero loss and Chidambaram’ claim of coal lying buried under mother earth to claim  any wrongful gain to any one. He could be the ideal Lokpal for he could defend the indefensible and the principal opposition also will also accept him whole heartedly.Will Sonia Gandhi and her son consider this man for the job for that will be a land mark decision