It is indeed a sad day when a leading politician can claim that her immense wealth has been donations to her from her followers. Many of these followers had taken loans to gift her the wealth!
While I cannot understand how impoverished people can be motivated to further indebt themselves to shower such monetary gifts, what really gets me is that the income tax tribunal has accepted the explanation.
This means that in future politicians when faced with charges of wealth beyond known means, can use this precedent. In a country where we had a culture of loan melas and subsequent writing off of the debt, I would not put it beyond politicians to get their followers to take loan and give them money and later legislate to write off those loans.
The only news paper to highlight this issue was the Times of India. In my mind more than the furore generated by the Gujarat elections, this particular case should have been at the forefront of media and public discussions. Once again for unexplicable reasons, such an important issue has faded into the background.
It is also interesting to note that most politicians have significant wealth in this poor country of ours. Many have corruption cases against them. The investigation into these take a life time and delivering judgement after due process takes another. As they say there is no justice if it is delayed!