Jayalalitha, in fact, has herself said that all the FERA cases against them are in court, so there's little Bezbaruah couldreally do to harass her anymore. In which case, the BJP could hardly have removed Bezbaruah to placate her. In any case, since Jayalalitha is now vociferous in her support for Bezbaruah, it's obvious that he wasn't removed to protect her interests.No, no, the FOBs point out quickly, the real person the BJP wanted to protect was Ashok Jain of The Times of India. That, in fact, is also the line which Jayalalitha is taking when she says that someone formerly in the government (Pramod Mahajan) took a bribe to get rid of the former ED chief.

Well, it is entirely possible that the BJP is keen to protect Ashok Jain in return for some kind of support from The Times group of newspapers. Who wouldn't be? But will transferring Bez-baruah automatically assure this? And was Bezbaruah doing such a fine job of overseeing this investigation that it would automatically fall apart following his departure?

The answer to both questions, unfortunately, is no. For one, the case has been investigated for well over 20 monthsnow, sufficient time for the ED to have collected enough evidence to convict Jain of the alleged Rs 5 crore FERA violation. But, it will be argued, Jain still refuses to be questioned at length, and that's why Bezbaruah's continued stay at the ED is critical -- once he goes, and a new pliable chief is brought in to replace him, there will be no one to insist that Jain be properly interrogated. Even if you ignore the implication that the next chief will automatically be pliable, surely Jain's testimony can't be that crucial for proving his so-called guilt. After all, even if the ED is allowed to keep Jain in their custody for ten hours, say, on their terms, he can still refuse to answer any questions, pleading memory loss or simply telling them to talk to his lawyers. If the ED was hoping to trap Jain on inconsistencies in his statements, and then build their case on this basis, it speaks very poorly of their entire investigation so far.

The other prominent cases being handled by the ED, such as the Jainhawala one and the Chandraswami ones are, similarly, in such an advanced stage that there's little that Bezbaruah, or his successor, can really do anymore. Complaints have been filed in most of these cases and, even in the Indian Bank case, the role of the ED is quite limited much of the case is being handled by the CBI. The FOBs, of course, don't give up that easily, and have their next line of offence ready. The Prime Minister's Private Secretary (also a distant relative through his foster family) Shakti Sinha has a long-standing grouse against Bezbaruah and is now settling scores. When he was secretary in Delhi's education department, Bezbaruah opposed the government's attempts to introduce reservations for teachers -- Sinha, according to this story, tried to curry favour with the government and agreed to this. Bezbaruah, in fact, even ordered an inquiry into his dealings. Apart from the fact that Sinha says that he had agreed with Bezbaruah's views on the matter and that no inquiry was ever ordered intohis dealings, does anyone think that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will jeopardise his government to settle small-time scores?

In any case, and this is a point the FOB seem to have missed completely, the ED's track record in securing convictions is woeful. And since Bezbaruah has been at the helm of affairs for such a long period of time, surely this means that he hasn't galvanised the ED as much as is being made out. Nor can it be automatically assumed that the new ED will be pliable and that the government will be able to ride roughshod over him. The reason is the guidelines laid down for selecting the chiefs of the ED and the CBI by the Supreme Court order in the Jain hawala case last year. The Court said that these chiefs be appointed by a panel headed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) which would also monitor the functioning of these agencies, to ensure their independence. And the CVC himself is to be appointed by a panel consisting of the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, the HomeMinister and the Leader of the Opposition.

So, for the BJP to be able to get a pliable ED chief, they would have to fix things with the Vice-President, the Leader of the Opposition and, of course, the CVC himself. That, by all accounts, is a lot of fixing to do. Frankly, if the BJP government was capable of such systematic planning and such detailed co-ordination, their government wouldn't be as precarious as it seems today. Bezbaruah and his friends do protest too much.