Will Sh Chidambaram pl step up & answer?

..or are some people more equal than others?* First, some excerpts from “Silence, or bluster, is not an answer” by MJ Akbar (emphasis added):

…We need to lay out the sequence if we want to assess the consequence. In the 12 June 2011 issue of The Sunday Guardian our political editor Kota Neelima broke a story that in one of the famous taped conversations A. Raja, the Telecom Minister, told lobbyist Niira Radia that “Chidambaram has taken a lot of money”. Her source was a CBI document, part of the written CBI evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, headed by Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, based on an “Analysis of calls received from Income Tax Department”. It was submitted by the Anti Corruption Branch of CBI. This document is in possession of The Sunday Guardian.

Chidambaram, now Home Minister but in charge of finance during the substantive part of the telecom scam, has issued a statement that the “Raja” mentioned in the CBI note to Parliament was not A. Raja, the minister, but a certain K.R. Raja, an executive working for Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. K.R. Raja has made a statement apologising for casting such aspersions on Chidambaram.

The case gets more curious at every step. The questions have increased, not disappeared.

1: CBI has been investigating these tapes for a year at least. How could it make a mistake in identifying Raja’s voice in the audio when it must have heard that voice countless number of times? …Incidentally, the assumption that it was a private sector executive who believed that Chidambaram had got “a lot of money” does not make the allegation any less heinous, since it is the private sector which has paid politicians in this scam. Are we to assume that CBI has been ordered not to enquire any further when someone of the political weight of Chidambaram is involved?

2: This conversation was obviously recorded from Radia’s mobile phone, since the Mukesh Ambani Raja’s phone was not, presumably, being tapped. Did CBI question Radia about whether she had any knowledge of this “large sum of money”? Or does CBI pursue allegations against a DMK Raja to the hilt, but is totally indifferent to allegations against powerful Congress ministers? …What efforts did the CBI make to either substantiate corruption by Chidambaram, or absolve him? Or are we to assume that CBI has been ordered not to enquire any further when someone of the political weight of Chidambaram is involved?

Accusing the Finance Minister of corruption is as high a misdemeanour as we can get: Why did CBI not pursue this lead from the transcript?

…3: In the documents sent to PAC, CBI has consistently referred to principals by their surnames without adding initials before them. Chidambaram, for instance, has been mentioned only by his familiar surname in the relevant paragraph; there is no “P.C.” before the surname. The context of the document tells us that the text refers to the then Finance Minister, and not to any of the millions of other Chidambarams who are citizens of India. Similarly, former Telecom Minister A. Raja is regularly referred to only as “Raja”. Witness, to mention only a few examples, the CBI’s analysis of conversations on 15 November 2008, 18 November 2008, 19 November 2008 or 20 November 2008. All these references are in the papers that are with the Public Accounts Committee. There is no reference to any K.R. Raja in the CBI document. And even if the statement was made by the Reliance Raja, the question will not go away: why was there no follow-up in an investigation about corruption during these many, many months? Home Minister Chidambaram has not denied that the reference was to him, nor has anyone else.

Next some excerpts from an Open Letter from Sh A K Agrawal titled, “Some Questions For The Home Minister“:

…There have been allegations that the finance ministry, under your watch, is responsible for allowing not only the generation of the largest amount of black money, but also guilty of the fact that it was generated through corruption.

The loss to the exchequer during your tenure, as you are undoubtedly aware, has been tentatively pegged at over rupees two lakh crores divided equally between the 2G scam and the iron ore scam.

Prima facie, there seems to be a huge conflict of interest in your continuation on the Lokpal panel and the eradication of corruption through an independent Lokpal as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal bil as would be clear from some of the following questions that keep surfacing:

• Is it not true that Essar were paid Rs 1700 crores by Hutch for the purpose of getting the government clearance from FIPB (under finance ministry) for the Hutch Vodafone deal by a particular date?
• Was it a coincidence that the government gave the clearance within the time stipulated by Hutch, despite Hutch violating the foreign investment ceiling norms, and forgot to collect Rs10,000 crores of income tax before giving the clearance?
• Is it not true that you as finance minister failed to ensure that the pricing of spectrum/ license took place at market determined price through a cabinet decision and not be left to the corrupt ministers of the DMK?
• Can the polite letters written at the time absolve you of the guilt of the loss of around Rs 80,000 crores (pan India spectrum price calculated at Rs10,000 crores, the price at which they were sold) caused by M/s Raja and Maran?
• How could you have allowed M/s Maran and Raja to sell the pan India spectrum/license for Rs1600 crores in 2007 and 2008, when Vodafone bought Hutch shares for a valuation of Rs 75,000 crores announced in Feb 2007?
• Can you claim to be so ignorant of the law and valuation so as to allow the deal to take place? Did you, Sir, take any steps to protect public interest and public revenue?
• Did you not, instead, choose to look the other way knowing fully well that the black money will help DMK and the Congress win the election and bring them back to power?

In fact, Sir, apart from the above questions on the 2G scam, are you not disturbed by the questions that keep cropping up about your electoral victory during the last Lok Sabha? The petition pending in the High Court challenging your election will probably not be decided till your tenure as a MP and Minister is over, but when you question the representativeness of the civil-society members on the panel, do you ever pause to think about the question marks over your own? When you talk about the supremacy of Parliament, would you concede, Sir, that in such circumstances, perhaps your own right is, at the least, questionable?

..Now, Sir, let me remind you of some of the questions about the iron ore scam:

• Is it not true that during your watch as finance minister for four and a half years, corporates raked in profits of over Rs 2,00,000 crore through legal and illegal mining, mostly in the iron ore sector? How was this profit shared?
• Is it not true that the mining royalty is to be revised every three years as per section 8 of MMDR Act? Is it not correct that it came up for revision in Oct 2004 but was deliberately was low and fixed and not ad valorem?
• Why was this done when profits in the mining of iron ore had soared manifold and were giving a 50% return?
• Why did it remain at a ridiculous Rs 7 to Rs 27 per tonne (depending on the type and grade of iron ore) with the average of around Rs 15 per tonne. This royalty was neither made ad valorem nor was it revised from year 2000 onwards when the international price of iron ore rose to dizzying levels.
• Not just that, will you please explain why you did again not revise the royalty in October 2007 by when the rate of iron ore had doubled in three intervening years and profit was 80%? Why did you just not revise the royalty as long as you remained the finance Minster?
• Would you agree that an independent investigation under the Lokpal could investigate the sales record of the iron ore miners to show that they were grossly under invoicing the sale price and under reporting the profits?
• Would you agree that huge amount of black money was generated and salted away?
• Would you think it would be a fit case to conclude that there were pay offs for not imposing export duty? Or that even when imposed, the duty was negligible?
• Have you not served on the Board of Vedanta and been a corporate lawyer and a tax expert? Could you therefore argue that you were you ignorant of the stupendous profits being made by the mining industry?

Sir, there are some other persistent questions as well:

• Would you agree that you were the common factor in the leak of Justicre Pathak Inquiry Committee report and Justice Liberhans report?
• We all remember how Mr Natwar Singh was made the fall guy and made to pay for his role in the Oil for Food programme. But is it correct, as has been alleged, Sir, that you deliberately did not refer the three contacts (M9/35, M10/17 and M11/25) of Reliance to Pathak Committee which were obtained by paying bribes? Likewise, Sir, did you go out of your speech in Parliament to shield Mr Mukesh Ambani?

Do read the letter in full; Image courtesy: Wikipedia.

* As for some people being more equal than others, this was what I referring to:

Centre’s handling of CM..stark contrast to Kalmadi http://bit.ly/kkAE6B Reminds me of old Babu saying: Show me the face, I’ll show you the rule

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Adjacent Post: Karti Chidambaram should read Milton Friedman