<b>Three former Cong ministers booked</b>
Thursday, April 29, 2004 (Jaipur):
Three former Congress ministers in Rajasthan have been booked for corruption after they were caught on camera allegedly accepting bribe for land allotments.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau on Wednesday filed a case under various sections of the <b>Prevention of Corruption Act against Gulab Singh Shaktawat, Chhoga Ram Bakolia and Takiuddin Ahmed.</b>
The ACB took up the matter early this week after real estate agent Ranveer Singh released CDs purportedly containing video recordings of the three former ministers allegedly accepting bribe for allotment of a prime land in Jaipur.
Singh is believed to be a close friend of a BJP member who had contested December's assembly elections in Rajasthan.
The Congress has maintained that the tapes are fabricated. (With PTI inputs
Fernandes slaps legal notice on Sonia
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Defence Minister George Fernandes has slapped a legal notice for defamation on Congress President Sonia Gandhi seeking an "unconditional written apology" within 72 hours for her alleged attacks against him in the issue of purchase of caskets for Kargil martyrs. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Was posted by Kaushal in another thread:
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Even when RG was alive, there were swarms of italians all over the place. Quatrocchi is good example of the Italian riffraff. even though he had nothing to do with either defence stuff or Guns, Bofors was told by (?) either to deal with Snamprogetti (an engineering company building fertilizer plants ? only in India can Horsemanure turn into gold !), Quatrocchi's company(?) or lose the contract. This is when RG was alive. Now that he is dead who is to stop Madam from running amok and looting the treasury with a swarm of italian mafia in tow. Remember the Indian economy is now huge and the amounts are commensurately large. We dont even have a name for such large figures ( what is a crore crore =10 **14, or a 100 trillion rupees. Here is ane xplanation as to why Bofors was such a big deal inspite of the fact that the amounts involved by today's standards were small (12 crores to the Congress, part of which surely went to Rajiv and family)
Thirteen years after it broke, the Bofors scandal shows no signs of going away. In 1987, Rajiv Gandhiâs advisors had assured him that Bofors was a middle class preoccupation which would have no impact on the country at large. In 1989, these advisors were proved wrong when the Congress lost the election largely because of Bofors. In 1990 and 1991, the new government headed by V.P. Singh was obsessed by Bofors. Letter Rogatories were sent to Switzerland, assorted investigators made several trips between Delhi and Geneva and much noise was generated. But nothing came of the investigations.
In 1991, when the Narasimha Rao government took over and asked the CBI to go slow on Bofors, most people assumed that we had heard the last of the scandal. But no, within a year, Bofors claimed another victim. Foreign Minister Madhavsinh Solanki handed over a note to the Swiss authorities calling for a halt to the investigation. The details of the note leaked and Solanki was forced into political oblivion from which he has never recovered.
Over the years, Bofors has continued to flare up from time to time. An investigative story in The Indian Express in the mid-1990s forced Ottavio Quatrocchi to flee the country, one step ahead of the CBI. When H.D. Deve Gowda took over as prime minister, his hand-picked CBI chief, âTigerâ Joginder Singh acted as though he would solve the Bofors case single-handed and made the, by now statutory, pilgrimage to Zurich and Geneva. Two years later, Bofors hit the headlines again, this time, not because of the scandal but because the guns themselves proved to be such a success during the Kargil conflict. Most recently, the Vajpayee government has filed a Bofors chargesheet which has generated its own share of controversy because it names Rajiv Gandhi among the accused. Congressmen stopped the Lok Sabha from functioning for several days and even now the issue threatens cooperation between the government and the Opposition.
When you consider the total amount involved in the Bofors kickbacks, you begin to realise how much we have upped the ante when it comes to corruption. By todayâs standards, Rs 64 crore is peanuts. Every single scam that has come to light over the last five years has concerned hundreds of crores: Rs 64 crore is probably equal to the kind of profit that any of the accused in the securities scam made in an average week.
So why is it that Bofors exercises this hold over the national imagination? Why is it the scandal that wonât go away?
The exact sequence of events that led to the Bofors scandal is probably worth repeating if only because most people have forgotten what really happened.
The Indian Army decided during Indira Gandhiâs reign that it needed a howitzer. Various arms manufacturers approached India and the army began a long and exhaustive process of weapons testing. This process was still continuing when Indira Gandhi died and Rajiv took over. By then, there were two clear favourites among the weapons: the French gun Sofma and the Swedish Bofors howitzer. Both guns had their champions and their detractors. Within the army it was widely believed â though never substantiated â that competing manufacturers had paid off assorted generals and this accounted for the different opinions.
The Rajiv government attempted to speed up the process of selection, but also, took the unusual step of declaring that it would not deal with the agents of arms manufacturers. Signs were put up in the defence ministry to the effect that agents would not be allowed to meet any officials. As an agent is an integral part of any buying and selling process, it was never explained why this decision had been taken.
However, it was generally held in Delhi that this was part of a new election funding scheme evolved by Rajiv Gandhi and his two principal advisors, Arun Singh and Arun Nehru. Apparently, Rajiv and the two Aruns had tired of the traditional method of raising electoral financing: selling licenses in the marketplace or accepting contributions from dodgy businessmen who wanted to be forgiven their income tax or foreign exchange violations. Their solution was to zero in on the vast purchases made by the public sector, including the armed forces.
They calculated that hundreds of crores were paid to agents as commissions on these purchases every year. Supposing the Government of India asked sellers to sack their agents and to pass their commissions to the Congress party under the table? Such an arrangement had several advantages. One: the commissions would be paid by whoever got the contracts, they would not be paid to influence the award of the contract. So, India would continue to get the best goods. And two, if you sold licenses in the marketplace, you compromised on industrial development and had to cope with assorted industrialists who felt that you owed them favours. This way, you would never need to see the foreign buyers again and there would be no sense of having accepted a bribe.
The morality of this arrangement was always dubious. But its defenders claimed that it was a matter of choosing between lesser evils. Elections had to be fought. Money was always required. Wasnât it better to raise the funds this way than to accept bribes from the Indian industrial class?
When arms manufacturers were asked to fire their agents, most made a show of complying with this directive, though many merely reorganised the relationship. In the case of Bofors, for instance, its agent was a company called Anatronics run by a bluff Punjabi arms dealer named Win N. Chaddha. Once Bofors was asked to sack Chaddha, it reworked the arrangement so that he was no longer working on a commission basis. Instead, Anatronics was hired for a fixed amount to function as Bofors consultant in India. Nobody was sure whether the directive banning agents from the defence ministry applied to consultants as well. And there is evidence that Chaddha continued to function â for all practical purposes â as Boforsâ agent in India.
By the time the army had to make its final selection, there were two clear lobbies among the generals. General Sundarji, apparently with the backing of Arun Singh, chose Bofors, which he said had a âshoot-and-scootâ capability (it could be moved after it had fired) which Sofma lacked. The Sofma supporters questioned Sundarjiâs judgement and dropped dark hints as to his motives. What is certain is that the selection process moved rapidly through the final lap and that the army headquarters chose Bofors. The Rajiv Gandhi government took just 24 hours to endorse that recommendation and the contract went to Bofors.
While the Sofma lobby was unhappy with the decision, it caused no great stir in India. Bofors, on the other hand, was in serious financial difficulty and the award of the contract was regarded as the deal that saved the company. The Indian flag flew over Boforsâ headquarters and Win Chaddha threw a party to celebrate at Delhiâs Maurya hotel. The entire banquet hall was festooned with banners which read: âWin wins again.â Chaddha, no shrinking violet at the best of times, assured guests that âMy family is now set up for generations.â
Nothing happened till the spring of 1987, when Swedish Radio, which was investigating the Bofors company, revealed that Bofors had paid bribes to secure the Indian deal. This announcement created a mild stir in India, largely because there was already a controversy over another defence deal (the HDW submarine deal). But the Opposition scented blood when the Rajiv Gandhi government suddenly began to overreact. Instead of simply denying the charge of corruption, it made the wholly unnecessary claim that there could be no question of bribes because there had been no agents in the deal. When the charges persisted, the government fell back on a destablisation theory; the allegations, it said, were part of a foreign conspiracy to destabilise India. Inevitably, this hysterical overreaction convinced the Opposition that something was amiss.
With the government on the defensive, it became open season. All kinds of irresponsible theories, completely unsupported by any evidence, featured in the press. One version had it that Rajivâs friend, Amitabh Bachchan, had taken the bribe. This was extended by The Indian Express to argue that the bribe had been routed through the non-resident Inlaks group, on the tenuous grounds that Amitabhâs sister-in-law had a sister whose husband worked for Inlaks.
Even while these charges were being flung around, The Hindu managed to procure documents suggesting that contrary to Boforsâ claims, commissions had been paid. One recipient of these commissions was a company called Pitco.
According to the Bofors files secured by The Hindu, the mailing address for Pitco cheques was âcare of G.P. Hinduja, New Zealand House, Haymarket, London.â
The Hinduja connection gave the saga a new life. The Hindujas were a controversial, non-resident, Sindhi business family who had already been in the public eye because former defence minister, V.P. Singh, had alleged that they were agents in the HDW submarine deal. Moreover, it had been believed that the Rajiv Gandhi government had banned the Hindujas from entering into the centres of power. One foreign minister, Baliram Bhagat, had been sacked because he had visited the Hindujas in London while in office. So how had the Hindujas swung the Bofors deal?
As the controversy swirled, the Rajiv Gandhi government appointed a joint parliamentary committee (JPC), ostensibly to investigate the matter. Because the Opposition boycotted the JPC, its report quickly turned into a whitewash. Nevertheless, the JPC did make some interesting revelations. One: Bofors had two agents in India. They were called Pitco (so The Hindu was right all along) and Svenska. According to Bofors, they had terminated the agreements with Pitco and Svenska after the government asked it to sack its agents. Why then did Pitco and Svenska continue to receive money from Bofors? Well, said Bofors, those were winding-up charges for terminating the contract.
If this explanation was unconvincing, then Bofors faced even more difficulty in explaining why it had hired a third agent called AE Services after it had terminated the arrangements with Pitco and Svenska. Finally, the Bofors executives examined by the JPC offered this explanation: we forgot that we werenât supposed to hire agents.
The more anybody with an open mind (excluding the JPC) examined the arrangements with the agents, the more suspicious the hiring of AE Services became. Not only had it been hired while the deal was in its final lap, but it was also supposed to get a commission only if the contract was signed within a particular time frame. By some fortuitous coincidence, the deal was pushed through just before the deadline expired.
By now, The Hindu had printed more documents. These confirmed the original suspicion that Pitco was connected to the Hindujas. Further, Win Chaddha was the signatory for Svenska. As Svenska received a large chunk of the commission, this caused some eyebrows to be raised. Was Chaddha really worth that much money? (Perhaps this explained why he said that he was set up for generations.) Or was Svenska a slush fund through which Chaddha accessed the money that Bofors used to pay off generals?
But AE Services remained a mystery. The JPC accepted the Bofors explanation that it was a British firm headquartered in Guildford, Surrey, owned and promoted by a Major Bob Wilson. This was hardly the whole story. I went to Guildford and discovered that AE Services had no office. The address was of a post-box in a solicitorâs firm. The total capital of the company was £100 divided into a hundred shares of one pound each. Major Wilson owned one share. The rest were owned by a shadowy Leichtenstein corporation.
For most people in Delhi, the implication was obvious. When the Congress government decided that the army was going to recommend the purchase of Bofors, it asked the company to route its commissions to the party. AE Services was simply a vehicle employed to accept the funds.
But this was supposition. How did one prove it?
The Bofors company appears to have abandoned the traditional arms dealerâs dictum that discretion is the better part of commerce. On the one hand, Win Chaddha was garrulous beyond belief. And on the other, the companyâs president, Martin Ardbo, actually kept a diary in which he noted the details of all his conversations. Worse still, Ardbo persisted with this diary even after the scandal had broken and dutifully noted down the details of the cover-up that Bofors had planned. Inevitably, Swedish Police raided him and confiscated the diary. Just as inevitably, it was then leaked to The Hindu.
To Ardboâs credit, he tried writing the diary in code. Sadly, he employed a code that even a moderately intelligent schoolboy would take three minutes to crack. For instance, he referred to his partners in managing the cover-up as âHansensâ. One might have believed that the Hansens were fellow Swedes, except that the diary made it clear that they lived in London and India and that one of them, when he was not described as Hansen, was called GPH. You did not have to be a genius to work out that the Hansens were the Hindujas and that GPH was G.P. Hinduja.
The same applied to the other entries in the diary. Where Ardbo did not use code, he employed bad spelling. Thus, one entry read: âGPHâs enemies are Serge Paul and Nero.â As the Hindujas battle with Arun Nehru and Swaraj Paul was well-known, the implications were obvious. When you got past the code and the bad spelling, the diary made chilling reading. He was meeting, Ardbo wrote, with a âGandhi trustee lawyerâ to finalise details of the cover-up. Moreover, he no longer cared about âthe consequences for Nâ (obviously a reference to Arun Nehru) but âQâs involvement could be a problem because of closeness to R.â
So, who was Q? If R was Rajiv, then Q had to be somebody who was close to him. The Opposition decided that Q was Ottavio Quatrocchi, the Delhi representative of Snamprogetti, the Italian multinational, whose friendship with Rajiv had been a subject of controversy. There were two theories. The first was that Quatrocchi had accepted the money on Rajivâs behalf. The second was that Quatrocchi had acted on his own but had inveigled himself into Boforsâ graces by trading on his friendship with Rajiv.
Even as the speculation continued, the Rajiv government fell. The V.P. Singh regime made tall promises but proved unable to make any headway with the Swiss who actually rejected its Letter Rogatory on grounds that it was badly drafted. Fortunately for Bofors buffs, The Hindu and then The Indian Express (to which The Hinduâs Chitra Subramaniam had shifted) kept up the disclosures. But even as these mounted, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated.
Logically, the Bofors scandal should have ended with Rajivâs assassination. There is a tradition in India that we do not speak ill of the dead. Even if Rajiv had taken money from Bofors, this was now in the past and of no interest to anybody. But such was the power of the Bofors scandal that nothing, not even the assassination, could diminish its lure.
During the Narasimha Rao government, Chitra Subramaniam produced documents suggesting that some of the money that had been paid by Bofors as commissions had been diverted from a Swiss bank account to another account, the ultimate beneficiary of which was Quatrocchi. Even while the CBI debated whether to interrogate him, Quatrocchi skipped the country. He has not set foot in India since then but continues to issue statements from his new home in Kuala Lumpur declaring his innocence.
The Hindujas have also claimed that the whole thing is a frame-up, but their credibility was damaged by the Swiss governmentâs actions. Shortly after the Swiss finally accepted a Letter Rogatory from India, they froze the six bank accounts into which Bofors had paid commissions. The Government of India asked the Swiss to transfer papers relating to those accounts to New Delhi. No, said the Swiss, we have to first deal with appeals from the signatories to those accounts. When one appeal was overturned, the Swiss, in an uncharacteristic breach of bank secrecy, informed the Indian government that they had rejected the appeal filed by G.P. Hinduja and Jubilee Finance.
If the Hindujas are not the signatories to the Bofors accounts, then why were they appealing to prevent the documents from being transferred? The Hinduja explanations have been vague and unconvincing. Meanwhile, the Swiss dismissed appeals filed by Chaddha (who was the signatory to Svenska) and Quatrocchi (who it now seems was behind AE Services) and transferred those papers to India. Only the Hinduja papers are still pending because the family has gone to the Swiss Cabinet for a final appeal. If this appeal is rejected, the documents will be here by Spring 2000.
The Vajpayee government has used the two sets of documents that have been transferred to file a charge-sheet in the Bofors case. Controversially, it has named Rajiv Gandhi as an accused, even though he is dead. The governmentâs defence is that as the case has been filed under the Prevention of Corruption Act, it has to prove that the money was transferred to a public servant to demonstrate corruption. It will probably argue in court that Quatrocchi intended to pass on the AE Services money to Rajiv, though how it can possibly prove this is hard to see.
In retrospect, and with the benefit of hindsight, we can probably make sense of what happened in the Bofors affair. According to the copy of the Pitco contract dug up by The Hindu, the Hindujas were appointed Boforsâ agents in the late 1970s. This suggests that Bofors followed the traditional system employed by all arms companies. There would be two agents. One would be the official agent â in this case, Win Chaddha through Anatronics and Svensksa â who would push Boforsâ case and handle the middle-level pay-offs. The second agent would be secret and high level. His job would be to swing the deal at the top level.
This arrangement worked till the Rajiv government asked Bofors to sack its agents. It needed Chaddha to handle the low-level bribing, so it merely reworked the existing arrangement. But all the evidence suggests that the Pitco contract was, in fact, terminated. The Hindujas were out of favour with Rajiv and had nothing to contribute. Because of their long-standing relationship with Bofors â dating back to the Shahâs Iran â they were paid what Bofors later called âtermination or winding-up charges.â
It is possible that bribes were paid at the army level to influence the selection of the gun, but there is little doubt that India got the best weapon â the Kargil conflict has proved that. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>If there is any scope for impropriety, it emerged after the army had decided in principle to go for Bofors and AE Services was hired. Given that Quatrocchi was involved, AE Services was either a front for the Congress party or was a freelance activity of Quatrocchi in his individual capacity</span>.
The worst-case scenario, therefore, is this: the Congress party took a kickback of about Rs 12 crore on an arms transaction in the mid-1980s. Seen in perspective, and with regard to the murky morality of Indian politics, this is not a particularly big deal. Narasimha Raoâs government probably made that much money every week. And while in such Rao-era scams as urea, India was cheated, this was a victimless commission. The army got the best gun, and the AE Services commission was secured by reducing the amount that Bofors would have paid Svenska. If there was a single loser in the whole transaction, it was Win Chaddha who got Rs 12 crore less.
Given all this, why does Bofors continue to exert such a huge hold on the national imagination? Why, when we think of Rajiv Gandhi, do we always think of Bofors? Why do we not think of corruption the moment Narasimha Rao is mentioned? Why is it that Rajivâs reputation has to live with this taint?
There are no easy answers to these questions. But I think it is safe to say that Bofors would not be such a scandal were it to happen today. The importance of Bofors lies in the fact that it was a scandal that nobody had imagined could happen. For two years before the scandal broke, Rajiv was Mr. Clean, the man who was going to transform the Indian political system. When such a man was accused of corruption, it was the equivalent of a vicar being spotted emerging from a brothel. There was a sense of outrage, a sense in which a national betrayal had occurred.
The manner in which Rajiv reacted also contributed to the sense of betrayal. <b>Throughout her tenure, Indira Gandhi was confronted with corruption scandals. But when she was faced with something like the Kuo oil deal, she either ignored the allegations or consigned them to a committee. When nothing else worked, she blamed the CIA</b>.
If you examine Rajivâs responses, he began as you would expect Mr. Clean to behave. He was outraged by the allegation; one could argue that he gave it too much importance. Forget about bribes, he said, we didnât even let them hand out commissions. And then, as time went on, he slowly retreated from that Mr. Clean response and became his motherâs son. The matter was sent to a JPC and the destabilisation theory was trotted out.
I have never been able to work out what it was that made the difference. The Rajiv of early 1987 who banned the Hindujas, was completely different from the Rajiv of 1989 who had welcomed them back to the prime ministerâs house. My guess is that Rajiv genuinely believed that he had nothing to hide on Bofors. Within a month or so, he realised that he was wrong; that if the truth came out, he would be severely compromised. That is when his responses began to change, and that is when the Hindujas wormed their way back into his favour by offering to manage Martin Ardbo and to supervise the cover-up from Stockholm and London.
What was it that Rajiv discovered that so compromised him? It is hard to say, but there are two obvious explanations. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>The first is that the Congress had taken the commission, but that Rajiv, never a details man, had been unaware of this when he had launched his outraged defence. The second is that it took him a month or two to realise that Quatrocchi was involved. Even if Quatrocchi had been operating in an individual capacity, any revelation that suggested an Italian connection would have severely compromised Rajiv. Sonia would have been the subject of the attack and it is unlikely that he would have been able to face that level of personal assault.</span><i>But Vir Sanghvi is a congresswallah and is much too kind to his party and to its dead leader.</i>
Hence, the turnaround from Mr. Outraged Clean to Mr. Cover-up. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>In the process, he destroyed the illusions of a middle class that had blindly supported him and made Bofors a household name. The real reason why Bofors remains a national obsession is not because we got a bad gun or because hundreds of crores changed hands â in fact, we got a good gun and the sum was relatively small. </span>Bofors will always exert a special hold on the national imagination because it was the one scandal that made us lose our innocence and realise that all politicians, no matter how different they may seem are, at the end of the day, just the same.
The picture below may look funny but its not too far from reality.Rahul Mehta would probably agree with that.Any chance of getting him on this forum.
<img src='http://img42.photobucket.com/albums/v130/indiaforum/BhaiChara.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
5 tainted ministers with several criminal/corruption related charges in. some of them at cabinet level posts.
A person who was considered unfit to rule a state because of corruption(is on bail pending case resolution) is made a union minister. A person who was made to resign from a previous union ministry coz of corruption and criminal issues/charges is now in a new govt without any of the issues being resolved.
The Message is loud and clear. Indian democracy just legalized corruption/criminals.
No more calls need to be made for resignation of ministers . Tehelka can now do all the tehelka it wants. Who cares .. the indian aam junta doesnt.
Thanks for the moderator who moved my thread in here.
<b>Why Laloo wants âcriminalsâ in the Cabinet</b>
Manoj Chaurasia in Patna
May 23. â Mrs Sonia Gandhiâs âinner voiceâ might have driven her to decline the most coveted post, but one of her most trusted allies, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadavâs âintuitionâ seems to be telling him that some of his tainted party MPs, charge-sheeted in criminal and corruption cases, should not have any problem in getting ministerial berths in the Congress-led dispensation.
Of the eight RJD MPs finding their place in the new ministry, three have several cases of crime and corruption pending against them. Md Taslimuddin is one such person who was dropped from Mr Deve Gowdaâs ministry too for the same reason. The moot point, however, is why and on what grounds were they included in Dr Singhâs ministry? Also, why did Mr Yadav back their bids to become Union ministers, despite being aware of their bio-data and its possible political fallout? Observers cite three reasons.
The first is that the RJD chief may have been guided by the âprecedentâ set by Mr LK Advani and Miss Uma Bharati who continued in the Vajpayee Cabinet despite being charge-sheeted in the Babari Masjid demolition case. Another point to be noted is, Mr Yadavâs declaration that he would see to it that all pending cases against BJP ministers get opened afresh. However, the senior BJP leader from Bihar, Mr Sushil Kumar Modi, challenges the logic saying: âNeither of the two BJP leaders were chare-sheeted for any serious crime... they were mere political allegations.â
The second reason, observers say, is that Mr Yadav may have taken this decision on the basis of the peopleâs âverdictâ. While Mr Yadav himself is charge-sheeted in some six cases of the fodder scam, Md Taslimuddin is an accused in nine cases of crime, including murder.
Mr MAA Fatami has been officially accused of patronising an active member of the Dawood gang, and Mr Jai Prakash Yadav was charge-sheeted in the B Ed exam scam. The last named had even been to jail after his anticipatory bail plea was rejected by the Supreme Court. However, as senior journalist Mr Surendra Kishore said: âBeing a criminal does not seem to be a crime now for most politicians... Had it been so then the voters would not have voted for them.â And this exactly is the logic that might have influenced Mr Laloo Prasad to back the âcriminalsâ bidâ for ministership at the Centre.
The final reason, pundits here point out, is that Mr Laloo Yadav appears to be in a serious mood to throw an open challenge to the Opposition parties demanding exclusion of âtaintedâ leaders from the Central ministry. And Mr Yadav is also set to play the âminority cardâ deftly to defend the tainted leadersâ ârightâ to get ministerial berths.
In the RJD chiefâs calculation, any opposition to leaders from the minority community securing a berth in the Central Cabinet is bound to cause resentment among minority voters, which eventually will work to the RJDâs advantage in the near future. After all, Assembly polls are due in February.
<b>Tainted RJD ministers at Centre
n Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav: - Case Nos-RC 20 (A)/96, RC 38 (A)/96, RC 47 (A)/96, RC 63 (A)/96, RC 64 (A)/96, RC 68 (A)/96 and RC 5 (A)/96.
n Jai Prakash Narayan Yadav:-Munger RJD U/S 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, 477A, 109, 120 B of IPC. The allegations relate to giving temporary affiliation to a Muslim Minority Ahmadiya B Ed College even though it did not fulfil the basis conditions. He was the education minister in the Bihar government then.
BJP MP from Bhagalpur Mr Sushil Kumar Modi today alleged Md Taslimuddin intentionally concealed the following seven cases . 1. Araria SST No 232/1996-related to rioting, kidnapping, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation. Cognisance taken on 4 April 1987.
2. Araria GR 172/1986-rioting, kidnapping, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation.
3. Araria GR 1639/96-rioting, armed with deadly weapon, and attempt to murder. Cognisance taken on 2 August 1999.
4. Araria GR 176/1986-attempt to murder.
5. Araria GR 335 u/s 420, 467, 468, 120-B IPC-cheating & forgery of valuable securities and criminal conspiracy.
6. Araria GR case No 655/1982-attempt to commit suicide. Congnizance taken on 15 September 1982.
7. Araria PS 133/82.
Mr Modi further alleged the Darbhanga RJD MP Mr MAA Fatami patronised a Dawood aide. </b> www.thestatesman.net/page...1&id=43930
where is shabana ajmi, arundhathi roy.... I dont see them celebrating the last breath of india. They should be writing articles saying why we need criminals in policits. After all they only like funding tehelka when it talks abt corrruption only in certain(<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->) govts. Time for them to ask their money back from tehelka etc.
I guess aurndhathi must be making sure her permanent resident ship in britian is secure.. After all thats where she will run to if india were to go bank rupt. Then she can talk abt how stupid the indians were in british media and win accolades. may be write a book .... the indian sunset. win a booker award or two.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->where is shabana ajmi, arundhathi roy<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Shabana was pleading Commies to join govt., just to keep Hindus Nationalist party out of power. She had no problem muslim league, criminals are running country but Hey!! Hindus should not run country. Her wish is fulfilled.
Roy gave warning to Sonia Manio, unconsitutional Super Prime Minister of India, that she is watching her. She will watch her only, I don't expect any action from her.
26 May 2004: To turn the tables on the BJP which has threatened to make the fodder scam an issue in the coming Parliament session, Laloo Prasad Yadav is moving to show the Godhra carnage as a handiwork of the RSS and VHP.
Right after Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shanker Prasadâs press conference yesterday where they threatened to campaign against Laloo and Mohammad Taslimuddin in Parliament and outside, Laloo called for the Railway Protection Force (RPF) file on the Godhra carnage, in which fifty-eight women karsevaks and children were burnt alive.
The RPF had conducted the first inquiry on the carnage, and Laloo spent till 2 am this morning in the railway ministry till the RPF file was located, <b>threatening the RPF chief, A.K.Pandey, with suspension if the file went missing. </b>
Sources said that using the RPF inquiry report, the new Union railway minister wants to turn the needle of suspicion for the carnage on the RSS and VHP.
An obscure engineering company with a near-invisible office on Arthur Bunder Road in Colaba has bagged some of the biggest and most prestigious building projects in Mumbai.
Backops Engineering, which provides civil engineering services for architectural, civil engineering and construction companies, has secured plum projects like the cityâs international airport terminal building, the commercial complex at Phoenix Mills, Belapur railway station, the Wockhardt Hospital in Mulund, and buildings at the Osho Commune, Pune.
The list includes many other sought-after projects and some overseas assignments too.
The impressive line-up may have a lot to do with the fact that Rahul Gandhi, now MP from Amethi, owns 83 per cent of the companyâs shares.
In his affidavit submitted at the time of filing his nomination for the Lok Sabha elections from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi noted that he owned 83 per cent of the shares in the firm. The affidavit also mentioned that the property of Backops Ltd was part of his movable assets.
Gandhi has informed that he has capital investment of Rs 2,50,000 in the firm, which has a bank balance of Rs 3 lakh.
The office of Backups is in Puran Nivas on Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba. But it is so nondescript, even the watchman of the building doesn't know it exists.
What the watchman does know, however, is that the office of 'Rajani Associate' is on the fourth floor and that one could check there. The glass door of Rajani Associate reveals a huge name stamped on the walls inside: Backops Engineering.
Asked if Rahul Gandhi owns the company, a female employee there merely said, "I don't know."
Also, most builders, engineering firms and politicians in the city that Mid-Day spoke to said they did not know about the firm. A spokesman at Wockhardt even claimed the hospital had nothing to do with the company.
Name: Backops Engineering
What it does: It provides services including basic civil engineering work, fabrication drawings, bar bending schedules and drafting services. It has a team of engineers who promise to bring down costs of projects (compared to other firms) by 50 per cent. The company also offers dealing services and converts drawings from hard copy to soft copy
Some projects it has obtained: Mumbaiâs international airport terminal building, the commercial complex at Phoenix Mills, Belapur railway station, the Wockhardt Hospital in Mulund, and buildings at the Osho Commune, Pune
Projects that Backops has got
1. International Airport building, Mumbai
2. Belapur railway station
3. Container Freight Station for Maersk Sealand
4. Logistics Facility, United Liner Agencies, Nhava Sheva
5. Commerical Complex at Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel
6. Ashoka Shopping Centre, Mumbai
7. Training Centres for Reserve Bank of India
8. Headquarters for Wockhardt
9. Wockhardt Hospital, Mulund, Mumbai
10. ONCB/PNCB plant at Tarapur
11. Industrial complex for NRB Bearings, Aurangabad
12. Coromandel Fertilisers, Cuddapah
13. Township for IPCL, Nagothane
14. Institutional facilities for Ministry of Education, Oman
15. Industrial Training Institute, Mazagaon
16. The Oberoi Amar Vilas, Agra
17. Hyatt Regency, Kathmandu, Nepal
18. Meditation Hall and Guest House for Osho Commune, Pune
<b>Rahul Gandhi owns 83% in mystery Mumbai firm</b>
BS Bureau in Mumbai | May 28, 2004 08:51 IST
<b>Rahul Gandhi owns 83% in a little known Mumbai-based engineering company, Backops Services</b>.
However, even though the affidavit filed by Gandhi with his nomination papers for the Amethi Lok Sabha seat reads that he owns 83 per cent stake in 'Backops Services', the fourth floor office of the firm at Puran Nivas on Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba, displays the name 'Backops Engineering'.
The company has an official website -- back-ops.com, which contains the bare minimum information about <b>the company's job and lists a mobile number, 35452225, to contact the company. The phone was switched off on Thursday</b>.
Housed near the Taj Mahal Hotel, adjacent to the Radio Club, the <b>Mumbai office of Backops employs about 10 people. Nobody knows who the 'boss' is here</b>.
<b>When Business Standard visited the building in the evening, the office was locked and no employee was seen</b>. The 50-year-old building also houses a foreign exchange dealer, a firm of architects, an export house and a dental clinic.
Employees of some of these companies, under condition of anonymity, said <b>they have often seen Gandhi here. "He was seen last about six months back. Normally he comes here every three to four months. Milind Deora (son of Murli Deora and a Congress MP) also comes here accompanying him," one of them said</b>.
"Gandhi stays at the Taj Mahal Hotel whenever he comes to this office. Often, he is accompanied by foreign friends. Those days, lunch for the office comes from the five-star hotel," pointed out another.
An afternoon paper in Mumbai reported that the company was involved in the construction of the international airport building in Mumbai, the Belapur railway station in Navi Mumbai, a container freight station for Maersk Sealand, a commercial complex at Phoenix Mills at Lower Parel in Mumbai, the Wockhardt headquarters and the Wockhardt Hospital at Mulund in Mumbai, the IPCL township at Nagothane in Maharashtra, among others. Wockhardt officials have denied any involvement with the company.
<b>A Mumbai-based leading civil engineering firm said it has no knowledge of Backops' existence. "If such big projects were done in this city, some part of the work should have been sub-contracted. But no such thing has happened," senior executives of the firm pointed out. </b>
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 28 2004, 10:55 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 28 2004, 10:55 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> <b>Rahul Gandhi owns 83% in mystery Mumbai firm</b>
BS Bureau in Mumbai | May 28, 2004 08:51 IST
<b>Rahul blah blah blah</b> <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't see anything wrong in R. Gandhi owning 83% of a company which is doing legitimate business. I am unable to understand the problem here.
What are these news reporters complaining about?
1. Small company getting contracts on big projects
It is quite common in US to see high tech companies having a very high per capita revenue (and profit sometimes). I can give any number of examples, but MicroSoft would suffice.
2. There is an underlying assumption that the contract value is very high. After a little reflection, one can easily surmise that what the company does is to prepare drawings, most probably on some architectural CAD/CAE software packages. They are not the general contractors - probably they are just sub-contractors for just one small part in the listed projects.
3. Usually small companies of this type (i.e. companies in engineering/structural analysis consulting) are privately owned and need not have to disclose any of their dealings to the general public at large (at least in the US).
4. It is a sad commentary on the Indian psyche (which I believe has been created by all the preceding govts. most notably the CONG(I) ones) that anybody and everybody who is in business must be a crook. The underlying implication that "making money is bad" smacks of extreme commieness.
I would not give any credence to these reports until and unless there is some indication of wrong doing. I suggest that we hold our horses and not be blinded by our antipathy towards the Congi-Commies.
AJay latest on above, Have fun ----
<b>Rahul Gandhi's firm changes its website</b>
By: A Mid Day Correspondent
May 28, 2004
Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhiâs firm BackOps Engineering, on which Mid Day ran a report yesterday, changed its website and removed a page listing a series of projects it claimed to have worked on.
A friend of Rahul Gandhi who refused to be named clarified that those projects, among them Belapur railway station and the Osho commune in Pune, are <b>being executed by a firm called Rajani Associates (with whom Gandhiâs firm shares its office in Colaba). </b>
<b>BackOps did provide âdesigning and drafting servicesâ for some projects to Rajani Associates, he said, but not the ones named in the report</b>. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Of the projects listed by Mid Day, the friend said, âin no way whatsoever was BackOps Engineering involvedâ.
<b>âWe have been associated with BackOps only in the last one year</b>, but we have been working on most of these projects for much longer than that,â said Chaitanya Rajani, one of the partners in Rajani Associates.
<b>However, this is disputed by BackOpsâs own website which listed all the projects named in the report, as representative of their work</b>. <!--emo&:o--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ohmy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ohmy.gif' /><!--endemo--> Though the page was removed after Mid Dayâs report, a printout was taken by us and has been reproduced on page 6.
The page lists all the projects Mid Day reported the firm worked on. BackOpsâs website (www.back-ops.com) continues to say that the firm provides âbasic civil engineering workâ and states its experience as including âa large volume of work in concrete, structural steel, pre-stressed and pre-cast concreteâ.
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 29 2004, 03:43 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 29 2004, 03:43 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> AJay latest on above, Have fun ----
<b>Rahul Gandhi's firm changes its website</b>
By: A Mid Day Correspondent
May 28, 2004
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mudy, I still don't see any concrete evidence of wrong-doing. The company might be engaging in inflating its resume (and lying about the number of size of clients). It is for the other companies doing business with it to go through an independent "due deligence" process to figure out whether any business should be given to this company. Caveat Emptor. It Trustworthyness would figure prominently (mostly in the form of previous business contacts and references, stability of the entity, their current and past client lists etc.) in most professionally managed companies' buying decisions. At the first glance, this looks like trolling by Midday to see if there is something that they can ferret out. The company in question might be taking protective steps just to keep the peeping toms out of its premises. I am not ruing out the possibility that they may have something to hide, but that is not the only explanation for their actions.
AJay,
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->concrete evidence of wrong-doing<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We will be luck if we can get photcopy, video, audio evidence, till then .
Company is inflating its resume (and lying about the number of size of client.) He is inflating his degree. During election only two words he and her mother were screaming "Corrupt" and "Communal". If lying and inflating is not wrong doing than I think I am from wrong world. Here his honesty is in question. He is 83% owner of this company. Now it seem clients are fake and other info are fake, staff have no clue who is running show.. etc, so it means it is a coverup organisation.<b> What is the purpose of this firm? Only westerners were seen visiting ? </b>
This information just came out. It is better to keep track of all information and need to connect dots.
Now UPA is a collection of corrupt people, actually it doesn't matter if he lie or fake company. All are in same business anyway.
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+May 30 2004, 11:25 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ May 30 2004, 11:25 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
He is inflating his degree. During election only two words he and her mother were screaming "Corrupt" and "Communal". <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mudy
I agree with you. All I am saying is that the point has to be made with more subtlity and less "screaming" or people will tune out by putting it down as political witch hunting and petty jealousy.
Added a minute later:
Any lie will cost the source of the lies. My point is that if his company (and by constructive extension due to his majority share holding, Rahul himself) is enagaging in any kind of irregularity, they would have to pay the piper at some point - be it in the form of lost business or losing his seat in the next elections due to erosion of trust in people's minds. Right now he has a "Mr. C;ean" image because he has not been in the "rough and tumble" of the Indian polity.
>> I agree with you. All I am saying is that the point has to be made with more subtlity and less "screaming" or people will tune out by putting it down as political witch hunting and petty jealousypolitical witch hunting and petty jealousy
Wonder who is screaming ?
People will tune out -- log kya kahengae ?
BTW Mid-day is not in anyway close to BJP/Opposition.
And forget abt ppl, they are sheep.. anybody hear aby Telgi ..anyone ?
<!--QuoteBegin-Bhootnath+Jun 1 2004, 11:34 PM-->QUOTE(Bhootnath @ Jun 1 2004, 11:34 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> >People will tune out -- log kya kahengae ? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Please explain how "people will tune out" is equivalent to "Log kya kahenge".
Had I suggested that Midday should stop digging into R. Gandhi's affairs because Indians would look not united to firangs, that would have been "Log kya kahenge". What I am suggesting is that any exaggerated claims would be summarily dismissed by people whose mind share has to be gained to win the war. The boy who cried wolf too many times and all that...
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Of the projects listed by Mid Day, the friend said, âin no way whatsoever was BackOps Engineering involvedâ.
