The web thickens…
..compromising national security, India’s defence preparedness, investigations into corruption in high places and probity in public life. This is a lazy post comprising a series of very disturbing excerpts from various articles. It picks up from this post that I published earlier this week. If you think I am over-doing this topic, it is because it deserves to be overdone. National security is something that is fundamental to any country. It cannot be compromised. If questions are being raised about the state of our defence preparedness, they cannot be brushed under the carpet.
If the establishment is at such an edge that a seemingly innocent troop movement leads to suspicions of a coup, the situation is alarming and grave. Please do not consider this as an overdose on army/defence procurment/ Gen VK Singh etc. In any case, the matter has moved beyond personalities and is now in the domain of core strategic concerns. Without further ado, excerpts below (note that emphasis has been added by me to draw your attention to points I believe are of special significance). Read on..
First, excerpts from Senior minister Sutradhar of coup report? by Madhav Nalapat (emphasis added):
Sources involved in tracking sensitive developments claim that a senior minister of the UPA government was the mastermind of the April 4 front page item in a daily newspaper about a suspected coup attempt. The sources claim that the minister is connected – through his close relative – with the defense procurement lobbies gunning for Chief of Army Staff General V K Singh,and that the decision to “trick the newspaper into running a baseless report was to drain away support for General Singh within the political class”,who could be expected to unite against any effort at creating a Pakistan-style situation in India. However,the minister in question appears to have miscalculated  the response of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defense Minister to the report.”
..Others say that a close relative of the minister in question has been “regularly meeting with arms merchants and their lobbyists,including on his many visits abroad”. They say that the Intelligence Bureau seems clueless about such activities,as “its net does not cover the influential people in question”.
..According to these sources,the minister in question “is well-known to senior journalistic levels of the publication” that ran the coup report.
…While no one accuses the senior minister of wanting to degrade the capabilities of the army, these sources say that he has perhaps unwittingly “played into the hands of certain arms lobbyists who are salivating not only at the prospect of garnering huge army orders during the balance of the UPA’s term in office” but “who seek to weaken the training function of the army and thereby render the force less effective against the sort of challenges that it is facing in Kashmir and other threatres.”
Now who might this “Senior Minister” be? The clue perhaps lies in another article by Madhav Nalapat, carried almost exactly a month ago. From “Who is Lt-Gen Tejinder Singh?” by Madhav Nalapat, read this excerpt (emphasis added):
Those involved in the making of purchases for security agencies..say that retired Lt-General Tejinder Singh,who has been explicitly accused by the Army of having floated reports that Chief of Army Staff General V K Singh spied on Defense Minister A K Antony, is not an unknown figure within the world of suppliers of equipment. One source said that Tejinder Singh “operates in tandem with a Major Hooda (retd) and his son, both of whom are well known to Karthik Chidambaram,the influential son of Home Minister P Chidambaram”. The younger Hooda, a presumed relative of the Haryana Chief Minister, is alleged to be “active in promoting the products of certain agencies, including foreign entities”. These sources claim that Tejinder Singh was very close to a former Chief of Army Staff and that he “knows the incoming Chief of Army Staff,Lt-General Bikramjit Singh, very well”. None of these claims could be verified, especially suggestions that a such link “could influence procurement decisions by the Army in the future”. …That the incoming Chief of Army Staff has very powerful support within the UPA was made clear by the government’s decision to announce that he would succeed General V K Singh,even if the latter were to quit prematurely.
…Reports of suspicious transactions in these agencies have been buried under a carpet of official indifference. By avoiding an enquiry, what has happened is that the miasma of suspicion that is hovering over the head of Karthik Chidambaram is continuing. Numerous sources allege “undue attention and interest” by the young politician in matters relating to equipment suggested as being needed for national security..Interestingly, a source claims that “one of the national security agencies of the Government of India recently asked for an enquiry into Hooda and Singh by both CBI and IB”,but to no avail, “as high-level circles shield the two” .
Time for an interesting aside. From Revealed: The real story behind CBI’s Tatra probe by TÂ V R Shenoy, these excerpts (emphasis added):
..who was in charge when the Tatra deal was struck, how did the CBI get on Ravi Rishi’s track with such impressive speed, and where do matters now stand between the Union defence minister and the chief of the the army staff?
The answer to the first question is that the Tatra agreement was signed in the Rajiv Gandhi era. What is more, it might have happened at a time when the then prime minister was simultaneously holding the defence portfolio. To go back a quarter of a century in time, V P Singh was abruptly shunted out, for whatever reason, from the finance ministry in January 1987, and thrust into the defence ministry. He lasted barely two-and-a-half months in his new post, resigning – or being forced to resign – in April 1987.
In a delicious irony, the reason was that he had, reportedly without keeping Rajiv Gandhi in the loop, ordered an investigation into the purchase of HDW submarines from Germany. This was resented by the Congress – then still called the ‘Congress (Indira)’ — because the investigation seemingly called Indira Gandhi to account; the agreement was signed in 1981 when the Congress matriarch ruled India. Be that as it may, Rajiv Gandhi then took over the defence ministry temporarily. It was a masterpiece of poor timing; literally days after V P Singh’s leaving, a Swedish radio station broke the news of the Bofors scandal, and Rajiv Gandhi’s image never recovered.
Speaking of Bofors, during the heyday of the scandal one of the Congress’s chief talking points was that Rajiv Gandhi had taken the initiative to bar middlemen from anything related to defence procurement. Remember this point, it is important.
…We must now come to the second issue, the alacrity with which the CBI is pursuing Tatragate. Some reports suggest this happened because of General V K Singh’s interview by The Hindu. This is wrong.
Some others say the credit should go to Dr Hanumanthappa, a Congress MP from Karnataka [ Images ], who wrote to several people, intimating that something was wrong with the Tatra deal. This too is wrong. However, we should look a little into the Hanumanthappa episode. In 2009 Dr Hanumanthappa complained about alleged misdoings in the public sector undertaking BEML....Hanumanthappa complained that the Tatra trucks were not being purchased from the original manufacturer, but through intermediaries, who included Bharat Earth Movers Ltd and Vectra (in London). This violates the defence procurement rules quoted so often and so loudly by the Congress in the Bofors era. I am not sure if any recipient got the message. Hanumanthappa spent several pages in general complaints before coming to the central point in, I think, the fourth paragraph of the fifth page (or something like that).  Hanumanthappa’s letter reached Sonia Gandhi, who, rather peculiarly, handed it to Ghulam Nabi Azad. (The Congress’s rationale is that he is the Congress functionary in charge of party affairs in Karnataka, but a defence deal is scarcely a party issue.) At any rate, in October 2009 the letter found its way into A K Antony’s office.
The defence minister did not ignore the letter, and asked for the matter to be probed. But A K Antony then made a mistake, he did not pursue the matter, something that he himself would openly admit as an error. (As far as I know, Hanumanthappa has still not received a proper response!)
…But if it was neither General V K Singh’s interview nor the Hanumanthappa letter that did the trick, what stirred the CBI into action? Very simply, the CBI, like the tax authorities, looks into matters if it receives ‘credible evidence’. This was one of those cases, and behind the scenes the investigators built their case without any fuss. And on February 21, 2012, if I have the date correct, the minister gave the sanction to prosecute.
Please note the date, it was about five weeks before General V K Singh’s explosive interview. Note too that the sanction was given not just to ‘investigate’ but to ‘prosecute’.
So, why did the CBI wait to go after Ravi Rishi, the man behind Vectra?
It has been wrongly reported in the media that Ravi Rishi is an ‘NRI’, a ‘Non-Resident Indian’. The fact is that he is not an Indian at all, but a citizen of the United Kingdom. You could describe him as a ‘PIO’, a ‘Person of Indian Origin’, but he is not an ‘NRI’. And trying to extradite a British citizen from Great Britain is difficult at the best of times. Â But the CBI also knew that ‘Defexpo 2012’ was scheduled to start on March 29. India is one of the world’s largest defence equipment importers, and it was extremely unlikely that any manufacturer would refuse to visit. Â Sensibly, the CBI waited a few days until Ravi Rishi was in India, and available for questioning. That is how it reacted with such speed — because it was already on the case.…This brings up the last topic..namely how A K Antony and V K Singh get along…Frankly, this third issue is, at least to me, rather a banal topic. It is, one suspects, a smokescreen to divert attention from the mechanics of the Tatra deal, particularly how and why intermediaries were used when middlemen are barred from defence procurement matters.
And finally, from a post by Sanjeev (emphasis added):
The rot that has set in, in India’s defence establishment, concerns EVERYONE – not just in India but across the world. A strong India is vital to strategic partnerships across the free world. And India simply can’t afford a defence establishment that is not respected by the sepoy.
Anna has set the flame of integrity alight in the minds of millions of people. There is no knowing what can happen.
After reading Shantanu’s post, I’m now inclined to side with General Singh (keeping my fingers crossed, though, waiting for more evidence to emerge). He seems to have done the country a great favour by raising this very serious matter.
India has been repeatedly betrayed by its own, in its long history. Jaichand’s betrayal led to the conquest of India by Mohammed Ghouri – an action which arguably led the way for the Mughals to take over India in the coming centuries. India should hang to death – preferably PUBLICLY – any armed service officer or politician who is found guilty of lining his pockets through arms purchases.
It is time perhaps to say, enough of talk, discussions and online comments…As Sh Ranganaathan-ji said, “(It is) Time Time for (every) Bharatiya to Arise, Awake & not rest till the goal of clean governance is achieved. The next Gens would have to face worse situation if we do not arise to this occasion. Jai Bharat…Vande Mataram.
P.S. For those who may not know this (I did not), the Tatra scam was first publicly exposed in July 2011 by DNA:
…Flouting defence ministry guidelines, BEML, formerly Bharat Earth Movers Limited, a Rs3,500 crore company in which the government of India is the majority shareholder, has been buying components for the 6×6 and 8×8 trucks from a middleman in London.
…But DNA’s investigations show that BEML, nodal production agency for the family of Tatra trucks, has been dealing with Tatra Sipox (UK) Ltd, which is neither the OEM nor a subsidiary of the OEM. This racket has been in operation since 1997, according to documents in DNA’s possession. A former employee who held a senior position in BEML said that so far the company has completed transactions worth Rs5,000 crore with Tatra Sipox (UK) Limited, purported British subsidiary of Tatra Sipox a s (Slovakia), with at least Rs750 crore having been paid as kickbacks to BEML and defence ministry officials.
Senior advocate KS Periyaswamy, a shareholder of BEML, who sought the intervention of the president and a CBI probe into the Tatra deals, said: “At least 15% of the money sanctioned for the purchase of Tatra trucks is siphoned off as commission. Everyone from top to bottom gets their share. In my capacity as shareholder, I had highlighted this issue in the 2002 annual general meeting, but it wasn’t taken up.â€
The deal worked so well for the officials involved that BEML signed another 10-year agreement with Tatra Sipox (UK) in 2003, four years before the first agreement ended, to increase the scope of the relationship. Since BEML doesn’t have the know-how to manufacture these trucks even 14 years after the deal was first struck, it sources components from Tatra Sipox (UK) and uses them for assembling the trucks.
Related: Read this and weep.. and somewhat related: Karti Chidambram should read Milton Friedman
Image: Self-assembled collage from headlines and images available publicly and/or on Wikipedia. Images do not imply any statements or allegations against any of the personalities, companies or publications shown in the image.
Reproducing in full, a status update via Rajesh Kalra’s fb page
Subject: Fwd: How Army stood by Democracy during the dark days of Emergency – For whatever it is worth
FYI mail forwarded as received.
—————————————————–
Dear Shekhar Gupta,
I recall the days when I was the District Commissioner of Chandigarh in the mid-seventies and you were a cub reporter with THE TRIBUNE. You then had idealism with fire in your belly. I had taken you as my younger brother and had presided over your registered marriage, the only time I performed this duty which is delegated to Executive Magistrates. You then rose fast and became a clebrity in the media. Except for odd telephonic conversations there was no contact between us. Even this contact was lost when you became a super-celebrity and I could not even reach you over phone.
Be that as it may, after reading the special story written by you in today’s Indian Express insinuating coup attempt by the Indian Army led by a fine soldier called VK Singh all I can say is that I am ashamed of having ever known you. I would not depart without reproducing a brief passage below:
The critical role played by the Indian Army in protecting and defending India’s democracy during the dark days of Emergency (26th June, 1975 – 21st March, 1977) has been candidly brought out in the Book “’JP Movement, Emergency and India’s Second Freedom’: (Publisher VITASTA, ISBN 978-93-80828-61-9, October 2011 – Author M.G.Devasahayam)â€, which was written in the context of the National Emergency and the role played by Jayaprakash Narayan (who was my prisoner for nearly six months) in restoring democracy. Herewith are some of the extracts:
“During the 20 months of active Emergency, people moved in hushed silence, stunned and traumatised by the draconian goings on. Across the nation, grovelling academicians, advocates and accountants vied with each other to sing paeans of glory to the Emergency rulers, some signing pledges of loyalty and servitude in blood! Whisky-swilling and pipe-smoking social climbers and sycophants chanted in unison, “Discipline is preferable to democracy,†just because trains were running on time and they got a parking lot at the Connaught Place! The bulk of the civil service crawled when asked to bend. The higher echelons of the judiciary bowed to the dust and decreed that under the Emergency regime, citizens did not even have the “right to lifeâ€. Politicians of all hue and colour, barring honourable exceptions, lay supine and prostrate. There was gloom all around and it looked as if every thing was over and the world’s largest democracy was slowly but surely drifting into dictatorship. ”
What changed the tide is best described in a long investigative article titled “Ruler of 600 million and alone – Indira Gandhi is unmaking a democracy ‘to save it’ and looking to exchange moral authority for bread†in the TIME magazine of August 11, written by Claire Sterling, regular columnist for Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post and International Herald Tribune, who had recently visited India.
“Indira Gandhi is perhaps more powerful than ever before, but she is also more alone. There is no one left to share with her the blame of the regime’s failings, no one of any stature to partake with her the task of running her vast benighted nation.
So desperately isolated has she become, so driven into new repressions that cut off her line of retreat, that the dynamics of staying on top may well push her into becoming a real dictator. And, though she is not the woman to make India anyone’s satellite if she can help it, her increasing dependence on Moscow and the Communists could send the country lurching into the Soviet orbit. Neither development is likely to leave the Indian Army unmoved. And that is perhaps the crux of the situation.
India’s standing Army of nearly a million men has been resolutely non-political since Independence. But it is also sensitive to the smallest slight to its honour, dignity and military independence, not to mention the nation’s sovereignty; and it is steeped in loyalty to constitutional principles. It was altogether her Army when she enjoyed unquestioned legitimacy of constitutional rule. It may not be should its ranking officers conclude that she has become something else. More than ever now, her fate hangs on the Army’s loyalty.â€
Taking a direct hit at Indira, the author concludes: “Someone once told me, as I was traveling around India, that the one thing worse than trying to govern the country by democratic persuasion would be trying to govern it by force. Yet that is how Indira is trying to do it now. Depending on how fast and how far she goes in changing from a traditional Prime Minister to the one-woman ruler of a police state, the Indian Army – the one group with the power to stop the process – could intervene. If it were to do so, it would almost certainly be not to replace her with a military dictator, but to restore the institutions (of democracy) it has been drilled into defending since birth.â€
You have insinuated that such an Army had attempted a coup. Can there be a worse form of betrayal? God alone knows what your motives are? Yet may God bless you.
With anguish in my heart, I am copying this to some of your colleagues and some others for whatever it is worth.
M.G.Devasahayam
Well said, Shri Devasahayam. I fully endorse your lambastig of Shekhar Gupta for circulating a canard as a lead story.
regards
Ram
Do read: http://www.eng.chauthiduniya.com/2012/04/the-spook-conspiracy-exposed
Some excerpts from Tatra scam: Govt did impose deal on the Army by Pradip R Sagar & Saikat Datta:
New Delhi: Union Defence Minister AK Antony is either unaware of the defence audit wing’s warnings against the outdated and overpriced Tatra trucks or he is feigning ignorance.
…If Antony was to go through the files, he would have noticed the several audit findings that point out Tatra trucks were imposed on the Army many a time.
…Several army officers, too, ensured that the racket kept rolling ever since the first truck was purchased in 1986. Some of them or maybe all those involved will have to answer the CBI in the coming days.
…
In 2006, the defence audit wing audited the performance of the army’s vehicle management. S Kalyanraman, a senior audit officer in the wing, chanced upon a transaction with several anomalies in connection with the purchase of Tatra trucks. In a query note, accessed by DNA, to the army headquarters, he pointed out these discrepancies.
..in 2002, the army issued a fresh set of parameters for buying trucks (six-wheel drive trucks under GSQR 486). And three firms, BEML with its Tatra trucks, Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland, were shortlisted.
Strangely, BEML made it to the list with the Tatra T-815, a four-wheel drive truck. Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland were running six-wheel drive trucks on trial when the list was prepared.
“Subsequently the LPTA 1621 truck of Tata Motors qualified for induction in the army because the firm had carried out the suggested modifications successfully and it was approved by VRDE”, Kalyanraman said in his note.
But inexplicable changes followed and an order for 490 trucks were placed with BEML in March 2006 at an estimated cost of Rs254.54. Kalyanraman’s audit investigation revealed that the order went to BEML after “secretary (defence production) strongly recommended” the public sector unit to the then defence secretary and the then vice-chief of the army.
Shekhar Dutt was the defence secretary then. He is now the governor of Chhatisgarh. Considered close to the senior Congress leadership, Dutt received several assignments after retirement.
The defence ministry justified the switch by changing the parameters. It used a GSQR meant for some other truck to push the deal in favour of BEML. All this was done “to keep the production line of BEML alive”.
Last year, too, the CAG reported negatively against BEML and Tatra. …The audit report (No. 24 of 2011-12) on defence services noted: “The increase of Rs352 crore under heavy and medium vehicles was mainly due to… additional requirement of funds for the new scheme (HMV Tatra Quantity 788)”.
At least Rs314.85 crore was paid as advance for contracts that were hastily pushed through in March 2010 “for Tatra vehicles”. But “no benefit could be achieved” and there was a case of “over-booking”.
More on Karthi Chidambaram’s business interests:
Did Karti own shares in Advantage Strategic at any point?
Indirectly, yes. On 25 March 2011, Ausbridge Holdings bought 200,000 shares (amounting to a 66% equity stake) in Advantage Strategic. Ausbridge Holdings was 95% owned by Karti.
…
The company’s 2011 annual return shows that Karti owned 18,000 of the total 19,000 outstanding shares in the company as on 21 September 2011. In March this year, Karti quit the directorship of Ausbridge.
On 15 September 2008, CBN Reddy and Kriya FMCG Distributors acquired a 50% stake in Advantage Strategic. Kriya FMCG was founded with Karti’s wife Srinidhi Chidambaram as one of the two first directors.
On 1 September 2008, Srinidhi Chidambaram and her daughter transferred their majority shares in the company to Reddy. An honourary secretary of Tamil Nadu Tennis Association, Reddy is a director in Kriya FMCG, Advantage Strategic and Kaiser Surya Samudra.
…Do his companies have any dealings with anyone involved in the Aircel-Maxis deal?
Yes. Kriya FMCG had a few, small business transactions with Sindya Aqua Minerale Pvt Ltd. This company is owned by Apollo Hospitals chairman Pratap Reddy’s daughter Suneeta Reddy and her husband Dwarakanath Reddy. The same promoters own a 26% stake in Aircel through Sindya Securities and Investments Pvt Ltd and Deccan Digital Networks.
Somewhat related..From PC lands in more land trouble 11 September 2012 by J Gopikrishnan and Kumar Chellapan:
More skeletons have tumbled out of Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s closet. This time it is about the stark discrepancies in the land holding declared in the name of his wife in the affidavits filed before the Election Commission of India in 2004 and 2009.