{"id":1044,"date":"2012-10-16T11:03:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T05:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2012-10-16T11:03:47","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T05:33:47","slug":"will-vadragate-turn-out-to-be-sonias-bofors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2012\/10\/16\/will-vadragate-turn-out-to-be-sonias-bofors\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Vadragate turn out to be Sonia\u2019s Bofors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nVivek Kaul<\/strong>
\n\u201cRoti tawa par, janta party hawa main\u201d <\/i>was one of the slogans going around in the Lok Sabha elections that happened after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Riding on the honest image of Rajiv Gandhi (Indira\u2019s son and a former Indian Airlines pilot) and a sympathy wave due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, the Congress party won more than 400 seats in the lower house of Indian parliament.
\nThis was an unprecedented majority for the Congress party, something it had not managed to achieve even under the leadership of Jawahar Lal Nehru, Rajiv\u2019s grandfather and India\u2019s first Prime Minister. Neither had it managed such a huge mandate from the people of India under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.
\nBut Rajiv would soon squander away these gains. As Aarthi Ramachandran writes in Decoding Rahul Gandhi <\/i>\u201cThe Rajiv Gandhi government was bogged down by allegations of kickbacks to the tune of Rs 64 crore paid to middlemen in the purchase of Swedish Bofors guns. The government\u2019s \u2018stonewalling\u2019 of demands to bring guilty to book in the Bofors case and other corruption scandals destroyed Rajiv\u2019s image as Mr Clean. Ramchandra Guha in India After Gandhi <\/i>says the \u2018stonewalling prompted speculation that the middlemen were somehow linked to the prime minister himself\u2019.\u201d
\nThe impact of this on the Congress party was huge. It lost the 1989 election to an alliance of Janata Dal and the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Rajiv Gandhi had to become the leader of the opposition. A party which had more than three fourths of the seats in the Lok Sabha was thrown out of power.
\nIt is often said that \u2018perception is reality\u2019. Rajiv Gandhi losing the 1989 Lok Sabha election because people \u2018thought\u2019 he was involved in the Bofors scandal and may have received a part of the kickbacks. And this perception was formed after his government stonewalled all attempts of bringing the guilty to book.
\nA similar situation seems to be now brewing up in the Robert Vadra-DLF case. A string of lawyer ministers from the Congress have jumped into the ring in order to defend Robert Vadra and would like the world at large to believe that there is no truth in accusations being hurled at Vadra (and indirectly Sonia Gandhi) by Arvind Kejriwal and his associates.
\nLet us sample some of the statements that have been made by these lawyer ministers. Kapil Sibal, one the country\u2019s top practicing lawyers before he became a full time politician and currently the Minister of Human Resource Development and Minister of Communications and Information Technology recently came to the defence of Vadra. \u201cAllegations are happening 24×7. It is a daily phenomena just like 24×7 television news channels,\u201d he said.
\nOn television Vadra has been defended by Jayanthi Natrajan who other than being the Union Minister for Environment and Forests also happens to be a lawyer having got her law degree from the Madras Law College. Vadra has also been defended by Manish Tewari, a Congress spokesperson, and a lawyer. Tewari felt that prima facie the charges made by Kejriwal and company were found to be \u2018untruth, innuendos and lies\u2019.
\nHR Bhardwaj, currently the governor of Karnataka, and a former law minister also came to the indirect defence of Robert Vadra. \u201cMany allegations were levelled against the Gandhi family even in the past.\u00a0Indira Gandhi\u00a0was also attacked. But she had a towering personality and fought back. Morarji Bhai (late Prime Minister Morarji Desai) made so many cases against her but they fell like nine pins,” he told reporters,\u201d he recently told the media. And I thought governors were meant to be above politics and political parties.
\nRashid Alvi, one of the spokespersons of the Congress Party on one occasion brushed aside the accusations hurdled at Vadra by Arvind Kejriwal and company as a \u201cpart of a well-planned conspiracy not against an individual but against the Congress and its leadership.”
\nOn another occasion on live television he dubbed Kejriwal\u2019s accusation as a publicity stunt and questioned the veracity of the documents put out by Kejriwal by saying \u201cwho will decide that the\u00a0documents<\/em>\u00a0shown by\u00a0Kejriwal<\/em>\u00a0are genuine or\u00a0fake.<\/b>\u201dThe website of the Parliament of India lists his profession as an advocate in the Supreme Court.
\n<\/b><\/em>P Chidambaram, the Union Finance Minister who also happens to be a lawyer said \u201cAll I can say is at this moment these allegations pertain to transactions between two private persons or entities…. The individual (Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi) has disclosed all these transactions in his income tax and other returns, and perhaps in the returns of the company.\u201d
\nVeerapa Moily, another Lawyer and who is\u00a0 the Union Minister for Corporate Affairs as well as Power, jumped to Vadra\u2019s defence by saying \u201c\u00a0I have already verified these allegations and no wrongdoings have been found in any of the six Robert Vadra-owned companies.”
\nWhat is surprising is that so many Congress lawyers have jumped to the defence of a \u201csupposedly\u201d private individual, Robert Vadra, and ruled out any wrong doing on the part of Sonia Gandhi\u2019s son in law. The only thing that this \u2018stonewalling\u2019 has done is that it has built the perception among people that something must be wrong otherwise why are so many lawyer ministers and Congressmen jumping to Vadra\u2019s defence.
\nIn some cases the defence has looked very shaky. Let\u2019s look at Alvi\u2019s insinuation that the documents might be fake. And this comes from a man whose profession is listed as a Supreme Court lawyer. It is very easy to download balance sheets of even unlisted companies these days. This writer spent the whole of last week doing that by logging on to www.mca.gov.in<\/a> and paying a Rs 50 charge for every Vadra company for which details were needed. So all one needs to know is the name of the company and it\u2019s possible to get the details of that company. And in Vadra\u2019s case it was pretty well known that he operated through Sky Light Hospitality Private Ltd a company in which he owned 99.8%.
\nAlso Alvi should remember that Kejriwal is being advised by Shanti and Prashant Bhushan, two of the best lawyers in the country. Shanti Bhushan was even the law minister of the country at a certain point of time. Other than this Kejriwal himself must understand a thing or two about balance sheets having been an Indian Revenue Service officer till a few years back. He is also an IIT Kharagpur passout from the pre coaching schools era and that definitely means he is smart. And more than anything else why would anyone who is raising a serious banner of revolt against the incumbent government choose to do so on \u201cfake\u201d documents?
\nP Chidambaram wanted us to believe that the dealings were between a private company and a private individual. If that is the case why are so many lawyer ministers coming to the defence of Vadra?
\nVeerapa Moily jumped to Vadra\u2019s defence by saying that there was nothing wrong in any of Vadra\u2019s six companies. If he had read through the memorandum of association of Vadra\u2019s Sky Light Hospitality carefully enough he would have realised that the company claims that it will carry out business as hotels, restaurants, lodges, ice-cream merchants, sweet meat merchants, milk manufactures, bakers, wine and spirit merchants etc.
\nBut instead of doing all that Sky Light Hospitality primarily seems to be in the business of real estate having accumulated a slew of properties on the basis of a so called Rs 50 crore advance it got from a plot of land from DLF. As has been repeatedly pointed out Firstpost and other places in the media the dealings between DLF and Vadra appear murky. (You can read about it completely here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>). Sky Light Hospitality owns a 50% stake in Saket Courtyard Hospitality Ltd through which it runs one hotel in Saket, New Delhi, in parternship with DLF.
\nVadra\u2019s Sky Light Hospitality bought 3.5acres of land sometime in 2008-2009 (period between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009) at Rs 15.38 crore. In the same period DLF bought this land from Vadra for Rs 58 crore. The question is how did the value of the land go up nearly 3.7 times in such a short period of time?
\nAgainst this sale DLF gave Vadra an advance of Rs 50 crore. An advance is typically given for the short term and needs to be returned within a year. But this advance was sitting on Vadra\u2019s balance sheet even as on March 31, 2011. So the advance given by DLF to Vadra was with Vadra for a period of greater than two years. This doesn\u2019t sound like an advance at all. It seems more like an interest free loan being passed off as an advance.
\nDLF also said in its 6 October statement that \u201cwe wish to categorically state that DLF has given\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0unsecured loans to Mr Vadra or any of his companies.\u201d The balance-sheet (dated 31 March 2010) of Real Earth Estates Pvt Ltd, another company owned by Vadra, shows a clear entry of Rs 5 crore as a loan from DLF.
\nVadra used all these loans from Vadra to go on a property buying spree. Estimates made now suggest that the value of this property now runs into hundreds of crores. He also benefitted from parking this largely interest free money in fixed deposits and earning an interest from them.
\n<\/b>Congress Party\u2019s over defence of Vadra has not helped it at all. It has built the perception among people that there must be some hanky panky involved in the entire business. That being the case no other response could have been expected from a party that doesn\u2019t really stand for anything except the Nehru-Gandhi family. Kejriwal has hit the Congress party where it hurts the most.
\nAs Ramachandran writes \u201cthe Nehru-Gandhi family remained relevant within the Congress. In fact, it became more powerful as it was only the centre around which the entire Congress edifice could hold together. It was now an amalgam of pressure groups which were interested in power, and their one-way ticket to it was through proximity to the Nehru-Gandhi family.\u201d
\nAnd it\u2019s in times like these Congress leaders have to go through their agni parkiskha and show their loyalty to the Nehru Gandhi family. That\u2019s precisely what they are doing. Their reactions are a clear case of Catch 22. They are dammed if they try to come to the defence of Vadra and they are dammed if they don\u2019t. However, in the process Vadragate may turn out to be Sonia Gandhi\u2019s Bofors.
\nThe article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on October 16, 2012.\u00a0http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/india\/will-vadragate-turn-out-to-be-sonias-bofors-492019.html<\/a>
\n(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at vivek.kaul@gmail.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vivek Kaul \u201cRoti tawa par, janta party hawa main\u201d was one of the slogans going around in the Lok Sabha elections that happened after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Riding on the honest image of Rajiv Gandhi (Indira\u2019s son and a former Indian Airlines pilot) and a sympathy wave due to the assassination of Indira … <\/p>\n

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