PANAJI
In comments which seem to hark back to the days of controversy-prone tenure of Satya Pal Malik, Goa Governor P S Sreedharan Pillai on Thursday expressed concern about change in the attitudes of elected representatives who he said end up plundering public money.
Speaking to reporters Pillai also highlighted a photograph of a young woman lifting an elderly lady and ferrying her to a polling station in Goa on February 14, saluting the spirit of the voter.
"So, the civic conscious(ness) is there, this type of things, suffering by a family for casting their vote! From my inquiry, I found that they are not connected to any political party," Pillai told reporters on Thursday.
"At the same time, people who got the mandate, how they are changing their attitude and plundering the public money, it will be a serious challenge," Pillai further said.
Pillai's comments come a day after he uploaded on Facebook the photograph of the senior citizen voter which had gone viral on social media.
Pillai's concern about corruption among elected representatives serve as a reminder of various utterances by former Governor and Pillai's predecessor Satya Pal Malik, who was transferred out of Goa, after he raised the issue of corruption and inept handling of the second wave of the pandemic by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government.
Commenting on the recent arrest of former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav in connection with a fodder scam case, Pillai said that such an arrest of a person accused of corruption had occurred because of the clean track record of the central government.
"...about 40 years back, I was also a student leader during the Emergency in 1975-77. I was the in-charge of the JP movement's student wing as a college student. I also participated in the agitation against emergency and corruption. At that time one of the star leaders of the JP movement in Bihar was Lalu Prasad Yadav," Pillai told reporters.
"A champion of the anti-corruption movement, now he (Yadav) is convicted in five courts. He is in (his) 70s. He is spending his time in jail. That is a thought provoking thing in my mind. When people elected him and gave the responsibility, what happened in Bihar is a lesson to be studied by people who are preferring and interested in democracy," he said.
The Governor further said that over the last 80 months, "not even a single FIR (has been filed) against MLAs, Ministers or any of their staff, no such untoward incident is reported legally".
"Allegation is different, anybody can make allegations against rivals. But no such things... I am not going into the politics of the Union of India government or anybody, but that is a good sign, without corruption, that is good for the country," Pillai said.
"(At) the higher-ups, if there is no corruption, slowly that will spread to the lower levels of the political arena and that will be a good sign and that is why the former Chief Minister of Bihar, who ought to have been a good follower of Jayprakash Narayan. Instead of that, JP's atma (soul) will not tolerate it," Pillai added.
