The La affaire Babu Kavlekar seems to be getting messier and murkier with the Anti-Corruption Bureau, after investigating his earnings, and savings, finding very strong grounds for a disproportionate assets case.
Before we get into those details, the issue has finally got his party, the Congress to make a few inquiries, with absolute details of the properties and other assets listed by the ACB available along with information of him not having revealed details of all properties with the Election Commission.
In fact a senior AICC office-bearer was asked to have word with Kavlekar asking him if all the details about his properties published in the newspapers was true. Kavlekar dismissed it initially by saying that some of the properties are not in his name and the same property in Kerala has been listed as multiple properties. While the AICC has for now accepted it, the course of the investigation and the findings of the ACB, will force the Congress to take a specific stand on Babu based on facts. The victimisation and the harassment card can be played only when the ACB does not come up with concrete evidence of Kavlekar having amassed wealth disproportionate to his known source of income.
Herald has learnt from indisputable sources that the ACB is not satisfied with explanations given by Kavlekar about his sources of income. It has actually called his submissions of obtaining loans from Mumbai based companies as “made with malafide intentions to justify the acquisition of assets disproportionate to his income”. These loan amounts, ACB feels will actually increase his percentage of disproportionate assets which currently stands at 59.21%. ACB in its initial report also feels that Savitri Kavlekar has “allegedly abetted” the amassing of disproportionate assets by her husband.
The commission of cognisable offence by the Kavlekar couple has been clearly made out by the ACB.
While the Kavlekars will have every opportunity under law to defend their case, it is the party which needs to take a call, in the light of the findings and observations, whether dismissing them as politically motivated, or “blackmail” a word used by PCC president Shantaram Naik, will be enough.
The Congress must understand that its response to the Kavlekar affair cannot be that that the government should go after those from the BJP who have allegedly misused their positions and amassed wealth. It has to get Kavlekar to prove beyond doubt that all his wealth is accountable and their accumulation has not taken place through what is simply called “black money”. It is only then that the Congress can take a high moral ground and then demand an apology from the government or a full-fledged probe into the alleged disproportionate assets of BJP ministers and other politicians.
Its attempt to put the ball back in the BJP’s court cannot work when its own Leader of the Opposition is under a serious watch with his properties raided and the ACB convinced that a cognisable offence is made out.
The AICC needs to introspect and respond whether a tainted Leader of the Opposition, under probe, is the right man to take on the ruling party and government on the floor of the Assembly. The moral authority, to do so has clearly gone.
