Scams of India

The current Government of India led by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh will probably go down in history as the government with the maximum number of corruption charges - both in terms of quantity and magnitude. Most of the scams exposed in the last few months have occurred while the government is still in power.

Ironically, some of the most severe allegations of corruption were against the Congress or Congress-led governments. These include...

• Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had imposed emergency when Jai Prakash Narayan led an anti-corruption campaign against her government.
• Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi faced rough weather when his senior colleagues led by V. P. Singh alleged corruption in the Bofors Commission scandal. 
• Soon after completing his tenure, Prime Minister P. V. Narsimha Rao's was tried in court for bribing the members of parliament from the Shibu Soren's JMM Party.
• Amar Singh, Member of Parliament, is currently in custody for his role in trying to bribe some members of parliament to abstain from voting or voting in favour of the Congress during the last Vote of Confidence in the parliament. Incidentally mediator and the whistle blowers in the case have been sent to judicial custody while the beneficiaries of this graft are still left untouched.

And now the current government has, shamelessly, surpassed all previous scandals, its ministers and senior MPs have landed in jail for their involvement in the mega-scams that have taken place in the last 3-4 years. The size of the scams put all the previous scams to shame...

• Commonwealth Games scandal - Thousands of Crores - Accused politicians include... Suresh Kalmadi MP and chairman of the Organizing Committee, Sheila Dixit, Chief Minister of Delhi.
• 2G Scam - Lakhs of Crores - Accused politicians include... A. Raja, MP and now ex-Minister of Telecommunications, Kanimozhi MP, P. Chidambaram - then Finance Minister, now Home Minister.

Earlier governments too have had criminal investigations against them, but none were of this magnitude and most were after the government had left office.

To top it all, the government has vigorously contested against those have raised voices against corruption and black money.

Tihar Jail, Delhi - the address of some VIPs

It has been a bad year for the ruling UPA government in New Delhi.

1. It lost a lot of credibility, the way it handled anti-corruption campaigns of - Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdeo.
2. So many of its sitting MPs and former Ministers have been sent to Tihar Jail while cases against them are being investigated and await court trials. These are ...

A Raja - Former Telecom MinisterHe had to resign as minsiter and had been  taken into custody by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Feb-2011 for his role in the multi-multi crore 2G scam.

Kanimozhi - Sitting Rajya Sabha MP of DMK and daughter of DMK supremo K. KarunanidhiSent to Tihar in May 2011 for allegedly taking a whopping bribe of Rs.214 crore in the 2G scam. 

Suresh Kalmadi - Former Organizing Chairman, Common Wealth Games and Sitting Member of Parliament
Suresh Kamadi was sent to Tihar in May 2011 for his role in another multi-multi crore scam - the Common Wealth Games scam, that he is alleged to have masterminded when he was the chief of the organizing committee.

Other high profile political inmates of Tihar Jail include...

Amar Singh - Rajya Sabha MP and former prominent member of Samajwadi Party
Sent to Tihar in September 2011 - Although he is not a member of the UPA alliance in the center, he has been sent to custody in the connection to the case where he has been accused of allegedly providing the bribe-money in the Cash-for-Vote scandal that shook the country in July 2008.

Mahavir Singh Bhagora and Faggan Singh Kulaste - both former BJP MPs 
Sent to Tihar in September 2011 - These are allegedly two of the three MPs who had been given the bribe by Amar Singh to abstain from voting during the trust vote of July 2008.