Mr Rahul Gandhi, what about jijaji Robert Vadra and his closeness to DLF?

rahul gandhi
Rahul Gandhi seems to have taken a liking to calling the Narendra Modi government a “
suit boot ki sarkar”. He made that jibe again in the Parliament yesterday where he said: “This government is anti-farmer, anti-poor. This is a suit-book ki sarkar.”
Rahul, as he did in the past, was trying to suggest that the Modi government was essentially batting for the corporates and not for the farmers of this country. But what the Gandhi family scion is forgetting in the process is that only a few years back India’s largest listed real estate company DLF was batting for his brother-in-law Robert Vadra.
Let’s recount what happened in the case of DLF and Vadra. DLF gave a Vadra and advance of Rs 50 crore for more than three years, and this advance was the money used by Vadra to go on a land buying spree in Rajasthan as well as Haryana, with more than a little support from the respective Congress governments in both these states. As we shall see Vadra had very little of his own money in the business and without the money from DLF he wouldn’t have been able to do anything. What does Rahul Gandhi have to say about this link?
In October 2012, the Daily News and Analysis(DNA) reported that between July 2009 and August 2011, Vadra bought at least 20 plots of land with an area of more than 770 hectares in Bikaner district in Rajasthan. In fact Vadra was willing to pay Rs 65,000 per hectare of land when the going rate was not more than Rs 30,000 a hectare
The Gandhi family son-in-law made these purchases through companies which included Real Earth Estates Pvt Ltd, North India IT Park Pvt Ltd, and Skylight Realty Pvt Ltd. As the DNA report pointed out: “A clutch of investors, including Vadra, apparently privy to information on upcoming industrial projects in the vicinity,
reaped huge profits with land values appreciating by up to 40 times since 2009 [the italics are mine]…These companies together invested Rs2.85 crore in barren land here during this period.”
So, Vadra bought land being privy to information that ensured that the value of the land would go up many times in the days to come. And he made a killing in the process. Vadra bought land through his companies just before a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Rajasthan government and private firm for a “Rs45,000-crore project to manufacture silicon chips for the telecom industry.”
Vadra was essentially trading on insider information, which wouldn’t have been difficult to get given that a Congress government led by Ashok Gehlot was in power in the state.
The interesting bit here is how Vadra went about financing the purchase of land. The money for it came essentially came from DLF. One of the Vadra companies which bought land in Rajasthan was Real Earth Estates Private Ltd. The company had an issued capital of Rs 10 lakh as on March 31, 2010.
Nevertheless, as on March 31, 2010, the company had 10 plots of lands listed under fixed assets. These plots were worth were bought for Rs 7.09 crore. Of these three plots were in Bikaner in Rajasthan and had been bought for Rs 1.16 crore. How did a company with an issued capital of Rs 10 lakh manage to buy land which cost Rs 7.09 crore in total?
This is where things get even more interesting. The balance sheet of Real Earth Estates as on March 31, 2010, shows that it had an unsecured loan of Rs 5 crore from DLF. An unsecured loan is a loan in which the lender does not take any 
collateral against the loan and relies on the borrower’s promise to return the loan. Why was DLF being so generous to Vadra? Can Rahul Gandhi give us an answer for that?
Real Earth Estates also had borrowed another Rs 2 crore from Sky Light Hospitality Private Ltd, another Vadra company. The total loan amounted to Real Earth Estates amounted to Rs 7 crore. And this money was used to buy 10 plots of land, of which three plots were in Bikaner.
Where did Sky Light Hospitality get the money to give Real Earth Estates a loan of Rs 2 crore? As on March 31, 2010, Sky Light Hospitality had an issued capital of Rs 5 lakh. How did a company with an issued capital of Rs 5 lakh, manage to give a loan of Rs 2 crore, which was 40 times more.
Enter DLF—the company had given Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality an advance of Rs 50 crore. When the controversy first broke out DLF had said in a statement: “Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd approached us in FY 2008-09(i.e. the period between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009) to sell a piece of land measuring approximately 3.5 acres…DLF agreed to buy the said plot, given its licensing status and its attractiveness as a business proposition for a total consideration of Rs 58 crores. As per normal commercial practice, the possession of the said plot was taken over by DLF in FY 2008-09 itself and a total sum of Rs 50 crores given as advance in instalments against the purchase consideration.”
The first instalment of the Rs 50 crore advance that DLF gave Vadra was paid on June 3, 2008. An October 2012 report in The Hindu points out that “ the 3.531- acre plot…M/s Sky Light Hospitality,…[was] sold to DLF Universal Ltd on September 18, 2012.”
Hence, the Rs 50 crore advance stayed with Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality for more than three years.
An advance unlike a loan is made interest free for a short period of time. Further, Vadra had access to a part of the Rs 50 crore advance for more than four years, given that the first instalment was paid by DLF in June 2008 and even though the sale was registered only in September 2012.
DLF in its statement tried telling us that this was par for the course. But how many other such advances did the company make. As The Financial Express wrote in an October 2012 editorial: “DLF has not been able to cite other instances of where interest-free advances have been given, and over such long periods of time.”
So clearly DLF had a soft corner for Robert Vadra, who is the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi and the brother-in-law of Rahul Gandhi, the president and the vice-president of the Congress party. The Congress led UPA government was in power between 2004 and 2014.
This Rs 50 crore was at the heart of Vadra’s operation and was used by him to buy land as well as flats. Rs 2 crore out of this Rs 50 crore available with Sky Light Hospitality was used to give a loan to Real Earth Estates Private Ltd. Effectively DLF gave money amounting to Rs 7 crore to Real Earth Estates Private Ltd to buy land. Of this Rs 1.16 crore was used to buy land in Bikaner.
What does Rahul Gandhi have to say about this? Now that he has accused the Modi government of being a “suit-boot ki sarkar” and being close to corporates, he could possibly explain this closeness of his brother-in-law Robert with a corporate? After all, Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The column originally appeared on Firstpost on May 13, 2015

If Rahul is serious about corruption, then let law of the land investigate Vadra

rahul gandhi

Vivek Kaul
Some of the political pundits who operate between Gurgaon in Haryana on one side and Noida in Uttar Pradesh, on the other, have been very impressed with Rahul Gandhi’s big speech, which he made late last week.
But there are several reasons which clearly point out that Rahul’s big speech should be treated like just another speech and nothing more.
In his speech Rahul Gandhi talked about giving “the country anti-graft bills which will transform the country,” and which will lead to “punish[ing] the corrupt and protect[ing] the honest.” A very noble thought indeed.
But look at the way the Congress party government in Haryana is treating the IAS officer Ashok Khemka. 
The government has recommended a CBI probe against Khemka for awarding a contract worth Rs 8 crore to a Gujarat based company. Over and above this, news reports suggest that a second chargesheet will be filed against Khemka, by the Haryana government. Khema has been accused of incurring a loss of Rs 22 lakh to the Haryana Seed Development Corporation of which he was the managing director between October 15, 2012 and April 4, 2013. Yes, you read the right. A loss of Rs 22 lakh.
As is well known by now Khemka exposed how the Haryana government went out of its way to help Rahul’s brother-in-law, Robert Vadra, to acquire land at cheap rates. Vadra later sold the land to DLF to make massive profits. (You can read a 
detailed analysis on this here).
So does this mean that Rahul’s statement of “punish[ing] the corrupt and protect[ing] the honest,” applies to everyone else other than the Gandhi family? And those who dare to expose the shenanigans of the family, will be hounded like Khemka has been?
As Pratab Bhanu Mehta writes in The Indian Express “Gandhi’s fiery AICC speech also vested too much in speeches and less in action. An anti-corruption stance is not very convincing when your own government is hounding Ashok Khemka and blaming the CAG and CVC.”
Also, why has Rahul suddenly woken up to corruption, a few months before the next Lok Sabha elections are due? Where was he when the Commonwealth Games scam, the 2G scam and the Coalgate scam happened? Holidaying in Europe?
Further, what does Rahul have to say 
about the CBI plea to drop criminal prosecution against Ashok Chavan, the former chief minister of Maharashtra, in the Adarsh Housing Society scam? That CBI is an independent organisation, which operates on its own? A special court in Mumbai rejected this plea.
Or what does he have to say about the Maharasthra government first rejecting the report by the judicial commission on Adarsh Housing Scam and then only partially accepting it. The Judicial Commission’s report pointed out that the Adarsh Society enjoyed political patronage of former chief ministers, the late Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushil Kumar Shinde (the current home minister of India) and Ashok Chavan.
As pointed out earlier, the Maharashtra government accepted the report in parts. While it accepted allegations against Ashok Chavan, it decided to give a clean chit to the late Vilasrao Deshmukh and the current home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Rahul also talked about “people demand[ing] honest and efficient governance,” and the Congress party “respond[ed] by getting the Lokpal Act passed.” The Lokpal Act in its current form has been doing the rounds for the last few years. Can Rahul tell us why did it take the Congress party so long to get it passed? Are the recent election results, where the party suffered an electoral humiliation, the main reason for it?
Rahul also took potshots at his main rival Narendra Modi of the Bhartiya Janta Party and said “Democracy is not rule by dictate. It is not rule by one man. It is rule through empowered elected representatives.” Very good point indeed.
But if Rahul is so concerned about democracy then when was the last time the Congress party had elections for the post of the President and Vice President?
As Ashutosh Varshney writes in 
Battles Half Won – India’s Improbable Democracy “An interconnected problem is the lack of intra-party democracy. Inter-party competition is vigorous, but intra-party competition is not. Party officials are appointed by the leaders, not elected by party members. During 1920-1973, the Congress party used to have regular elections, a practice dropped since then.” A Gandhi family scion who has inherited the throne should be the last person talking about democracy.
All these reasons make it very clear that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress party being very serious about corruption, doesn’t cut much ice. The Gandhi family scion needs to realise that ultimately actions speak louder than words.
As MJ Akbar put it in The Times of India “Corruption is a slippery slope for anyone in power. Congress should have stuck to its familiar narrative of populism and stability, for such advertising can be backed by evidence.” So, if Rahul is serious about corruption, then he should let the law of the land investigate the land dealings of Robert Vadra for a start and ensure that the Congress governments do not hound honest bureaucrats like Ashok Khemka. Then there will be real evidence to back his words. Of course, that is easier said than done.
(Vivek Kaul is an author. He tweets @kaul_vivek) 

Why BJP is right in politicising Vadra's shenanigans

Vadra3 (1) 

Vivek Kaul 

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) disrupted the functioning of both the houses of Parliament yesterday (i.e. August 13, 2013). “Congress ka haath, damaad ke saath, (hand of Congress is with the son-in-law),” chanted members of the BJP. The damaad they were referring to is Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Kamal Nath, minister of parliamentary affairs, commenting on the issue said that Vadra’s alleged shenanigans were a state issue. “It is a state issue and parliament does not discuss state issues … if they (opposition) want to discuss, then Congress members will demand a debate on the mining scam in Karnataka and mining mafia in Madhya Pradesh. We must discuss issues of Gujarat,” he said.

This was an extremely lame duck defence. Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party, had written to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue of the Uttar Pradesh government suspending IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal.
As a report in The Times of India points out “In a letter to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh, Gandhi said there is widespread concern that the suspended officer Durga Shakti Nagpal in the course of her public duties was seen to be standing up against vested interests engaging in illegal activity. It is reported that Nagpal has been hastily suspended for unsubstantiated reasons, she said. “We must ensure that the officer is not unfairly treated,” she told the Prime Minister.”
If one were to use Kamal Nath’s logic then Sonia Gandhi should not have written a letter to the Prime Minister on what is basically a “state” issue. If a national leader of the stature of Sonia Gandhi can write a letter to the Prime Minister on a state issue, why can’t the Parliament, which has many other national leaders, discuss a state issue?
Also, what is a national issue and what is a state issue? It is ultimately the states that constitute the nation. And if the son-in-law of the leader of the party that runs the government is accused of corruption, it is a national issue and a big cause for concern.
Several non Congress leaders have come out in the support of Sonia Gandhi, saying she can’t be held responsible for the actions of her son-in-law. 
Mayawati, the President of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) said “I would like to say if Sonia Gandhi is held responsible for it, our party does not agree with it. If someone does something wrong, his or her relations should not be punished. On the allegations against Robert Vadra, how can Sonia Gandhi be held responsible.” 
A similar view was put forward by Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Aggarwal. “I don’t agree with the BJP’s slogan of ‘sarkari damaad’. We are not in agreement with the politicisation of the issue and dragging Sonia Gandhi in to the issue. I do not see how she can be held responsible for the whole issue,” said Aggarwal. 
Sonia Gandhi cannot be held responsible for the activities of her “damaad”, maybe a valid point, but that does not mean that the Parliament should not be discussing the issue. Allow me to elaborate.
Robert Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality Private Ltd bought 3.53 acres of land from Onkareshwar Properties run by one Satyanand Yajee. The sale was registered on February 12, 2008. Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality paid the money by issuing a Corporation Bank cheque. Yajee’s Onkareshwar Properties did not encash the cheque immediately. 
In the balance sheet of Sky Light Hospitality as on March 31, 2008, there is a book overdraft entry of Rs 7.944 crore. This includes Rs 7.5 crore that was to be paid for the 3.53 acres of land that was bought and around Rs 45 lakh for the stamp duty that was paid for registering the sale with the Haryana government.
A book overdraft is not an overdraft at a bank but essentially a record of cheques that have been issued by the company but not encashed minus its bank balance. 
The balance sheet of Onkareshwar Properties showed a sundy debtors entry of Rs 7.95 crore on March 31, 2008. What this meant was that the company had not encashed the cheque issued by Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality and at the same time also helped pay the stamp duty. It need not be said that if it had tried to encash the cheque, the cheque would have bounced. Sky Light Hospitality had a negative cash and bank balance of Rs 7.94 crore.
The question is why did Onkareshwar Properties go out of its way to help Sky Light Hospitality, on what was a purely commercial transaction. As I pointed out in this piece yesterday, Yajee is known to be very close to Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the chief minister of Haryana. 
The Haryana government’s department of town and country planning issued a letter of intent to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality for grant of commercial colony license for 2.701 acres out of the total area of 3.53 acres, on March 28, 2008. This was done within a mere 18 days of application, IAS officer Ashok Khemka has pointed out in his 105 page reply to the report of the committee constituted by the Haryana state government (dated October 19, 2012) to inquire into the issues raised by Khemka when he was the director general of land records. 
The rules and regulations required the government to check for the capacity of the applicant to develop a colony. Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality had no previous experience of developing a colony. At the same time as on March 31, 2008, the company had a paid up capital of Rs 1 lakh. Paid up capital is the total amount of the company’s capital that is funded by its shareholders. How was a company with so little money expected to develop a colony? 
Once the commercial colony license was in place, Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality entered into into a collaboration agreement with with M/s DLF Retail Developers, on August 5, 2008. DLF as we know is the largest listed real estate company in the country. 
After this Sky Light Hospitality received a huge amount of advance or interest free loan from DLF. The balance sheet of Sky Light Hospitality as on March 31, 2009, clearly points out entries of Rs 15 crore and Rs 10 crore as advances received from DLF. 
Now as we can see everyone went out of their way to accommodate the business interests of Robert Vadra. Why was that the case? Not because Robert Vadra was a very promising entrepreneur and hence needed to be given all the help that the state government and the biggest real estate company in the country could give him. There are so many such entrepreneurs in the country who receive no help from the government. 
To conclude, lets go back to something that happened a few months back. Pawan Kumar Bansal, the union railway minister, was made to resign after his nephew was caught by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) while accepting a bribe of Rs 90 lakh, for organising a cash-for-jobs transfer of a senior railway board official Mahesh Kumar. 
Bansal said after his resignation that “I welcome the CBI probe. I gave a statement right after the incident that I have nothing to do with this. Also, that I have no business relationship with my nephew. The truth will come out.” 
Fair enough, even though it is difficult to believe that the nephew could have promised transfers without the minister knowing about it. 
The basic point is that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. Or to put in simple English, the associates of public figures must not even be suspected of wrongdoing. 
And if Bansal had to quit because of that, then the Parliament can at least have a discussion on the shenanigans of Robert Vadra.

The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 14, 2013 

(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek) 

Was Haryana CM Hooda, Robert Vadra’s political stooge?

Vadra3 (1) 
Vivek Kaul 
Crony capitalism has been alive and kicking in India for a very long time.
One of the original crony capitalists in this country was Sanjay Gandhi, son of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sanjay was a Doon school drop-out and had apprenticed as a motor mechanic at Rolls Royce in Great Britain in the 1960s.
He wanted to build a low priced people’s car called Maruti. His mother was the Prime Minister of the country and her colleagues in the government and the Congress party went out of their way to fulfil Sanjay’s dream.
In November 1970, a letter of intent was handed over to Sanjay Gandhi by Dinesh Singh, the then minister for industries. As Vinod Mehta writes in The Sanjay Story “The letter of intent was granted ‘on the basis of a paper proposal with no tenders called for and no impartial study’ for the mass production of 50,000 ‘low-priced’ cars per year made entirely of indigenous materials. In short, Maruti was licensed to match the total output of the other three domestic car manufacturers.”
But just a letter of intent wasn’t enough to get the project going. Land was needed to build the factory where cars would be manufactured and before that money was needed to buy that land. In stepped Bansi Lal, the chief minister of Haryana. “To his credit it must be said that Bansi Lal was the first to spot Sanjay Gandhi as a man of the future, as a man to hitch your bandwagon to,” writes Mehta.
Bansi Lal offered land to Sanjay Gandhi for the Maruti factory and at the same time gave him a loan to buy that land. As Kuldip Nayar writes in Emergency Retold about Bansi Lal “He was unscrupulous; means never mattered to him, only ends did. From being a briefless lawyer he had risen to be chief minister in less than a decade, and he wanted to go still higher. It was he who gave Sanjay, a 290 acre plot for the Maruti factory at a throwaway price along with a government loan to cover the amount.”
Despite all the help from Bansi Lal and the union government, Sanjay Gandhi’s people’s car never got going till he was alive. Production started only when Japanese car manufacturer Suzuki was roped in after Sanjay’s death in 1980.
Something similar has played out in Haryana where the current chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda seems to have gone out of his way to help Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
The IAS officer Ashok Khema brings out this nexus in a 105 page reply to the report of the committee constituted by the Haryana state government (dated October 19, 2012) to inquire into the issues raised by Khemka when he was the director general of land records.
This is how the story goes. Sky Light Hospitality Private Ltd bought 3.531 acres (or 5 bighas 12 biswas) of land from Onkareshwar Properties Private Ltd for a consideration of Rs 7.5 crore. This sale was registered on February 12, 2008.
Publicly available data on the MCA 21 portal of Ministry of Corporate Affairs, shows that Sky Light Hospitality is a company that was incorporated on November 1, 2007. As on March 31, 2008, the company had a paid up share capital of Rs 1 lakh. Upto September 30, 2011, its total paid up share capital was Rs 5 lakh. Robert Vadra owned 99.8% of the company and the remaining 0.2% was owned by his mother Maureen.
The company selling the land i.e. Onkareshwar Properties was incorporated as a company on September, 28, 2004. Its paid up capital as on September 30, 2011, stood at Rs 25 lakh. Of this 98% was owned by one Satyanand Yajee and the balance 2% by Godavari Yajee.
Paid up capital is the total amount of the company’s capital that is funded by its shareholders.
Various media reports have clearly established the link between Yajee and Hooda. A report published in The Economic Times today points out that “Satyanand Yajee, director of Onkareshwar Properties, which sold 3.5 acre in Shikohpur village to Vadra’s Skylight Properties, is general secretary of the All India Freedom Fighters Organisation(AIFFO) and is in charge of constructing and maintaining a memorial in the name of Hooda’s father Chaudhary Ranbir Singh in Rohtak.”
A report published in the Business Standard in October 2012, goes into even greater detail about the relationship between Hooda and Yajee. It points out the strong ties that Hooda has with the All India Freedom Fighters Organisation i.e. AIFFO. “Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, too, has strong ties to this organisation. Before his death in 2009, Ranbir Singh, Hooda’s father, was working president of AIFFO. And, Hooda is a founder-member and working president of AIFFO’s sister body, All India Freedom Fighters’ Successors’ Organisation(AIFFSO), according to his profile in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha website.”
The report also mentions that AIFFO had spent lakhs of rupees in full page advertisements which praised Ranbir Singh’s contribution to the freedom struggle. As mentioned earlier Ranbir Singh was Hooda’s father.
Of course, just because Hooda and Yajee share a relationship does not mean that Yajee could not have sold land to Vadra.
So let’s get back to the land deal between Yajee and Vadra. Yajee’s Onkareshwar Properties sold 3.531 acres of land to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality. The price of the land was worth Rs 7.5 crore and over above this there was a stamp duty cost of Rs 45 lakh, for registering the sale.
As per Khemka’s reply, Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality issued cheque number 607251 of Corporation Bank on February 9, 2008, to pay Yajee.
The question is how did Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitaliy with a paid up capital of just Rs 1 lakh(as on March 31, 2008) manage to pay an amount of Rs 7.5 crore for the land and Rs 45 lakh as stamp duty?
The answer lies in the fact that Sky Light Hospitality’s balance sheet as on March 31, 2008, shows a book overdraft of Rs 7.944 crore. This is almost equal to the amount of Rs 7.5 crore that needed to paid for the land, plus the Rs 45 lakh that needed to be paid as stamp duty for registering the sale.
What this basically means is that even though Sky Light Hospitality issued a cheque to Onkareshwar Properties, but the latter never got around to encashing it. As a report in the Business Standard dated October 16, 2012 points out “A book overdraft is not an overdraft at a bank but an excess of outstanding cheques on a company’s books over its reported bank balance.”
The notes to the account of Sky Light Hospitality also mention the same. “The overdraft shown in Corporation Bank account is book overdraft due to cheque issued before balance sheet date but not presented up to balance date, which is cleared after balance sheet date,” it is stated in serial no. 6 of the Notes To Accounts.
This can be confirmed from the balance sheet of Onkareshwar Properties as well. “Onkareshwar’s balance sheet as on March 31, 2008, showed an entry of Rs 7.95 crore under ‘sundry debtors’. This corresponds to the entry of Rs 7.944 crore book overdraft entered in Sky Light’s books. The land price was Rs 7.5 crore, and the balance Rs 45 lakh could have been registration and stamp duty costs. It appears Onkareshwar happily footed even these costs,” a report in the Business Standard dated Ocotber 27, 2012 points out.
So not only did Yajee’s Onkareshwar Properties not encash the cheque (it would have bounced if it tried to do so), it also happily paid the Rs 45 lakh stamp duty that needed to be paid to register the transaction.
The question of course is that if money did not change hands can the sale of the land to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality by Onkareshwar Properties be considered as a sale at all? This is something that Khemka points out in his reply. “If there was no payment as alleged in the registered deed, can it be said that the registered deed No. 4928 dated 12.02.2008 conferred ownership title over the said land upon M/s Sky Light Hospitality by virtue of the sham sale? Section 54 of The Transfer of Property Act, 1882 defines “sale” as a transfer of ownership in exchange for a price paid or promised or part-paid and part-promised. There was no promise to pay in the future in the registered deed. No price was paid as claimed in the registered deed No. 4928 dated 12.2.2008. The “sale” registered in the said deed cannot, therefore, be called a “sale” in the true sense of the term, legal or moral, and it cannot be said that M/s Sky Light Hospitality became owner of the land in question by virtue of the “sale.””
On March 28, 2008, department of town and country planning of the Haryana government issued a letter of intent to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality for grant of commercial colony license for 2.701 acres out of the total area of 3.53 acres. This was done within a mere 18 days of application, writes Khemka.
He further points out that “Sub-section (2) of section 3 of the Act of 1975 mandates that an enquiry will be conducted by the Director of Town & Country Planning, particularly with respect to the title to the land and the capacity of the owner-applicant to develop a colony.”
The phrase to mark here is the capacity of the owner-applicant to develop a colony. In order to check this capacity the owner-applicant (in this case Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality), under Rule 3 of The Haryana Development and Regulation of Urban Areas Rules, 1976, needs to furnish among other things, particulars of experience as colonizer and particulars about financial position as to determine the capacity to develop the colony, Khemka points out.
So what experience did Sky Light Hospitality have in developing colonies? If one looks at the memorandum of association of the company, stamped by the Delhi government as on October 27, 2007, the main objects to be pursued by the company on incorporation were as follows:
skylight


So this makes it very clear that building colonies was not among the main objects of Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality, when it was incorporated. As the Memorandum of Association clearly shows the main object of the company was to be in hospitality business, as was suggested by its name.
Nevertheless that did not mean that the company could not build colonies. Just that it did not have any previous experience in doing so.
As far as the financials of the company go, as I have previously pointed out as on March 31, 2008, the paid-up capital of the company was Rs 1 lakh. The company did not earn any income upto March 31, 2008. It had an expenditure of Rs 43,380 which was met through borrowed money. Hence, the company really did not have any capacity to build a colony.
As Khemka puts it “The “capacity” of the applicant-Company was nothing else other than Mr. Robert Vadra. The man became the measure of everything and the entire statutory apparatus a castle of sand.”
Once Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality got the letter of intent from the Haryana government for a commercial colony license on 2.701 acres out of total 3.53 acres of land, things got even more interesting. Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality now had the land title as well as the letter of intent for grant of colony license in its possession. This made it possible for it, to enter into a collaboration agreement with with M/s DLF Retail Developers, on August 5, 2008.
After this Sky Light Hospitality received a huge amount of advance or interest free loan from DLF. The balance sheet of the company as on March 31, 2009, clearly points out entries of Rs 15 crore and Rs 10 crore as advances received from DLF.
And this money paid by DLF was finally used to clear the dues of Onkareshwar Properties. As Khemka points out “this funding from the DLF Group was used to clear the dues of Rs 7.95 crores, i.e., Rs7.5 crores towards cost of land plus Rs 45 lakhs towards stamp duty, to M/s Onkareshwar Properties, the vendor-company in registered deed No. 4928 dated 12.02.2008.”
This is how the transaction was completed. This could not have happened without the Haryana state government granting a commercial colony license within 18 days of application to Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality, which had no previous experience of developing a colony. The license was renewed on 18th January, 2011 for a further period of two years up to December 14, 2012, Khemka points out.
Vadra’s Sky Light sold off the 3.53 acres of land to DLF for Rs 58 crore on August 18, 2012.
In doing this Bhupinder Singh Hooda turned out to be Robert Vadra’s Bansi Lal. The moral of the story is that behind every successful crony capitalist there is a successful politician.

The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on August 13, 2013
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

Indian politics and its Lalu Prasad Yadav syndrome

009_lalu_prasad_yadav
 
Vivek Kaul
During his heydays in the 1990s and the early 2000s, Lalu Prasad Yadav never organised political rallies.
He organised 
Railas.
These were very big political rallies held at the Gandhi maidan in Patna. And they were deemed to be so big by Lalu that the feminine sounding word ‘rally’ proved inadequate to describe them.
Hence a new word 
Raila was coined.
But time passed and the world went around, and in the end the old adage ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time’, came true in case of Lalu as well.
These days Lalu is a minor player both at the state and the central level. Given this, every few months you can hear him saying nice things about Sonia Gandhi, whenever the opposition parties choose to attack her.
A couple of days earlier Lalu went back to his favourite method of political engagement. He organised a 
parivartan (change) rally in Patna (and not a Raila). News reports suggest that Lalu hired thirteen trains to ferry his supporters to Patna for the rally.
This is a huge change from the usual. In the Bihar, that this writer grew up in, a rally would mean an open invitation to the supporters of Lalu to board any train that they wanted to.
Also like any good father would, Lalu used the occasion of the 
parivartan rally to soft launch his sons Tej Pratap and Tejashwi into big-time politics. Tej Pratap is a BA drop out and Tejashwi was a budding cricketer who played one Ranji trophy match for Jharkhand in November 2009. He was also a part of the Delhi Daredevils IPL team, warming his bum on the bench for a few seasons.
It is interesting if we compare this launch with that of Lalu’s own launch into serious politics which happened in the early 1970s. Lalu had quit student politics in 1970, after he lost the election for the post of the President of the Patna University Students Union (PUSU) to a Congress candidate. Before losing this election, Lalu had been a general secretary of the PUSU for three years.
As Sankarshan Thakur writes in Subaltern Sahib: Bihar and the Making of Lalu Yadav, “On the eve of elections of Patna University Students Union (PUSU) in 1973 non-Congress student bodies had again come together, if only for their limited purpose of ousting the Congress. But they needed a credible and energetic backward candidate to head the union. Lalu Yadav was sent for.”
The trouble of course was that Lalu was no longer a student. He was an employee of the Patna Veterinary College by then. But then those were the seventies and the state was Bihar, so not being a student was a small problem that could be fixed.
As Thakur writes “Assured that the caste arithmetic was loaded against the Congress union, Lalu readily agreed to contest. He quietly buried his job at the Patna Veterinary College and got a backdated admission into the Patna Law College. He stood for elections and won. The non-Congress coalition in fact swept the polls.”
And this set up Lalu for the big league as the agitation launched by Jai Prakash Narayan, against Indira Gandhi, gathered speed. The next year i.e. 1974, the agitation against Indira Gandhi spread throughout the country. As Thakur writes, “An agitation committee was formed, the Bihar Chatra Sangharsh Samiti to co-ordinate the activities of various unions and Lalu Yadav as president of PUSU was chosen its chief.” These events catapulted Lalu Yadav into the big league from which he never looked back. He became a member of the Lok Sabha in 1977 at a very young age of 29. He became the Chief Minister of Bihar in 1990.
But the fact of the matter remains that he if he wasn’t asked to contest the 1973 PUSU elections, Lalu might have never returned to politics and probably retired by now from the Patna Veterinary College.
Lalu was lucky because he was at the right place at the right time. His sons are lucky because they are his sons. The next generation of politicians(even those who are not a part of electoral politics) is always luckier to that extent. They already have a base that has been built to work from.
But the question does the next generation respect this base because of which they get lucky? And they answer seems to be no, as a spate of recent examples show. Robert Vadra, with his land dealings in Haryana and Rajasthan, has been a huge embarrassment for Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and the Congress Party.
Sharad Pawar had to recently come to the rescue of his nephew Ajit, after he made insensitive comments in drought hit Maharashtra. Mamata Banerjee’s IIPM educated nephew Abhishek stands accused of running Ponzi schemes in West Bengal. News reports suggest that UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has been spending a lot of time trying to settle ‘who gets the government contract’ dispute between his step brother Prateek and his first cousins. Pawan Bansal, had to recently quit as the Union Railway Minister after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) caught his nephew Vijay Singla for running a jobs for bribes racket in the Indian Railways.
And there are examples from the past as well. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s spotless reputation as the Prime Minister of the country was marred by the dealings of his foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya. J Jayalalithaa’s weakness for her foster son V Sudhakaran tarred her reputation. The late Pramod Mahajan’s son Rahul was and continues to be an embarrassment.
The late Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao’s son Prabhakar was accused of being involved in the urea scam in the 1990s. If we go back a little further, Moraji Desai, the fourth prime minister of India, had to deal with allegations of graft against his son Kanti Desai. Kanti Desai had allegedly collected Rs 80 lakh for party funds misusing his position as the PM’s son. Raj Narain a minister in Desai’s cabinet, even came up with the slogan “
Hamse kya parda haiKantike haath mein garda hai (Why hide it from us, Kanti’s hands are muddied).”
Jagjivan Ram could have become the first dalit Prime Minister of independent India if he hadn’t been embarrassed by his son, Suresh Ram. Nude pictures of Suresh were published in a magazine called Surya, which was edited by Maneka Gandhi. The pictures showed him in a compromising position with a 21 year old student of Satyawati College, Delhi University, called Sushma Chaudhury, who he eventually married (On a slightly different note Suresh’s sister Meira Kumar is the speaker of the current Lok Sabha). “If the Kamasutra has 64 poses of making love, this one certainly had 10,” wrote Khuswant Singh in a later column, with regard to these pictures.
As veteran journalist and editor Inder Malhotra has been quoted as saying “In fact, in many ways Suresh Ram tried to emulate Sanjay Gandhi and received the same shelter from his father which Sanjay got from her mother. It was a game of one-upmanship.”
And Sanjay Gandhi, among all the sons, daughters and relatives of politicians, was the biggest embarrassment of them all. His dictatorial ways ensured that the Congress party was thrown out of power for the first time since independence in 1977 (For a detailed study on this Vinod Mehta’s The Sanjay Story is an excellent read). Indira Gandhi who was known to be very stern otherwise continued to be a mother when it came to Sanjay.
The broader point is that the politicians’ weakness and love for their progeny (or even other close relatives) puts them in embarrassing situations. At times, the progeny are acting as fronts for the shenanigans that the politicians indulge in and at times they are on their own. But in either condition there is a cost that is to be paid for.
A major reason that Lalu Prasad Yadav finally lost in Bihar was because of the shenanigans that his 
saalas (brothers in law) Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, indulged in. They had the political patronage of Rabri Devi, who was the Chief Minister of Bihar. News reports coming out now suggest that Lalu’s two sons are also not the best of buddies. And this can’t be good news for Lalu Yadav whose political fortunes have taken a huge beating since 2005.
All the politicians who promote their progeny in politics and allied areas, need to thank Indira Gandhi. If it wasn’t for her, politics in India would have never become a family owned business. As historian Ramachandra Guha said in a lecture titled 
Verdicts on Nehru: The Rise and Fall of a Reputation (Second V. K. R. V. Rao Memorial Lecture, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, 20 January 2005) “After Nehru the Congress chose Lal Bahadur Shastri to become Prime Minister, a post on which he quickly stamped his authority. Mrs (Indira) Gandhi herself may never have become Prime Minister had not Shastri died unexpectedly. She was chosen by the Congress bosses as a compromise candidate who (they thought) would do their bidding. But once in office Mrs Gandhi converted the Indian National Congress into a family business. She first brought in her son Sanjay and, after his death, his brother Rajiv. In each case, it was made clear that the son would succeed Mrs Gandhi as head of Congress and head of Government. Thus, the ‘Nehru-Gandhi dynasty’ should properly be known as the ‘(Indira) Gandhi’ dynasty.”
India is still paying the costs of this monstrous mistake as almost all politicians now want to pass on the baton to their progeny and other relatives close to them. Professor Pulin Garg of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad used to say with regard to family owned businesses in India “
Haweli ki umar saath saal ( a family owned business lasts for 60 years).” It will be interesting to see how long political hawelis last on an average? That will be a big determinant of which way India goes in the decades to come.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on May 17,2013

(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)