Politics to TV channels: Matang Sinh’s changing roles, fortunes

After interrogation by the Enforcement Directorate earlier this week, Sinh is learnt to have admitted that he took money from Sen and is ready to return it once the amount is settled upon.

Saradha scam isn’t the first controversy Sinh finds himself embroiled in. In 1998, he was in news for being expelled from the Congress for allegedly using “unparliamentary” language against Congress president Sonia Gandhi on a TV channel. He was upset about not being re-elected to the Upper House the second time. Indeed, before becoming a successful media entrepreneur, Sinh dabbled in politics beginning with Youth Congress in Assam. He claims to have caught former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s attention, following which he moved to Delhi and later, won the confidence of former PM Narasimha Rao who appointed him the minister of state for parliamentary affairs in 1993.

Two years ago, he made a failed attempt to return to the Congress fold. Somebody who never fought an election and is now, politically rootless, he still claims to be a staunch Congressman.

His entry into the broadcast business happened through his enterprising, though now estranged wife Manoranjana Sinh. A former journalist who covered Parliament for many years, Manoranjana claims to have got the TV licences from the NDA government in 2003. “It were my brains and efforts that made Positiv TV a reality. He (Sinh) became a director in the company thanks to being my husband.” Sinh, on the other, claims to be the primary investor in the business and has been running it single-handedly since 2008 when he expelled his wife through a public notice.

Incidentally, Saradha’s Sen also named Manoranjana as someone who duped him of Rs 25 crore in return of some shares in Positiv TV.

Manoranjana, however, says the deal never came through.

Last year, Manoranjana filed a petition with the Company Law Board, alleging that her estranged husband had sold off Positiv TV to Congress MP Naveen Jindal, an allegation denied by Jindal. According to insiders in Positiv TV, the Sinhs had raised huge loans from banks to set up their broadcast business which hadn’t been fully paid. While the TV business flourished initially, it began incurring losses as competition mounted in subsequent years. Manoranjana claims that the company currently is not in pink of health.

It is assumed that Sinh took money from Saradha’s Sen to pay off some of his debts even as Manoranjana alleges that the attempt to sell Positiv TV to Jindal was also meant to ward off the financial crisis Sinh finds himself stuck in. Even if Sinh manages to wriggle out of the current controversy, he will still have a few battles to fight.