No reflection was sought to be cast on the integrity of law minister Ram Jethmalani when he was asked to resign from the Union Cabinet. He was asked to put in his papers to ease the relations between the executive (Prime Minister) and the judiciary (Chief Justice) only.' So said H.K. Dua, the media advisor to the PM, in the light of media reports that Jethmalani was asked to go following his role in the MS Shoes case. Frankly, it does strain credulity a bit, considering that just a few days before Dua's statement, information on the Attorney General's adverse (as far as Jethmalani is concerned) notings on the MS Shoes case were being bandied about by government sympathisers. But let's take Dua at his word, for he is an honourable man - in any case, this is now being sought to be projected as the official line. Now anybody who's studied the case a bit as we have (this column first reported on Jethmalani's file notings on September 5, 1998), would find this strange. For one, as this column had pointed out then, Jethmalani's order that HUDCO return MS Shoes' promoter Pawan Sachdeva's first installment of Rs 67 crore and that it allot him the Andrews Ganj guest house complex at the original price of Rs 100 crore, was quite out of the blue. Briefly, the MS Shoes-HUDCO case centres around a hotel-cum-guesthouse complex that Sachdeva won a bid for in 1994. Sachdeva paid the first installment of Rs 67 crore - Rs 40 crore for the guest house and the rest for the hotel - but couldn't make the remaining payments. HUDCO then wanted to retender the complex, Sachdeva filed several cases to stop this, managed to get several extensions, but still couldn't make the payment. In the event, his initial deposit was confiscated. Jethmalani contended, as urban affairs minister, that HUDCO had delayed getting clearances, and that's why Sachdeva couldn't make the payments. This, we argued, was not a valid argument since, under the terms of the contract, Sachdeva had to pay 40 per cent of the amount within a month of allotment, another 40 per cent within two months of this and the balance on possession. But since he never made even the second payment, the issue of HUDCO's delays was irrelevant - at best, this could only matter at the time of the last payment. But forget this for the moment. After all, it is just a journalist's view - apart from being that of Kiran Aggarwal, the secretary in the ministry who challenged Jethmalani's order. The fact worth keeping in mind is that, some months ago, the government did get a preliminary report from the CBI on the MS Shoes case. This was then referred to the Attorney General who, as early as May, opined that a detailed CBI probe was called for on certain aspects of the case, and that as law minister, Jethmalani should keep away from the HUDCO appeal in the court. Now surely this is something that H.K. Dua, media advisor to the Prime Minister, should have paid attention to, when he rushed to tell the world that Jethmalani's wrangle with the Chief Justice was the only reason for his dismissal. It is also strange that the Attorney General should now be telling Jethmalani that press reports on his notings are only half truths. Of course what Dua is telling us, unwittingly, is that the government is scared Jethmalani will spill the beans on some scam or the other, and so they're not going to move on the MS Shoes case. That the Attorney General's advice and comments in this case were sought, but this is being held as a trump card, to be exercised in the event of Jethmalani squealing on them. What could Jethmalani possibly squeal on? One issue that comes to mind immediately is the Cabinet regularising the posh Anant Ram Dairy, an illegal colony in the heart of Delhi. Jethmalani could draw attention to how, when he was in charge of the urban affairs ministry, and moral-crusader Jagmohan was looking after Telecom, the latter asked him to regularise Anant Ram. Jethmalani could ask why, if the government was being so moral, the Cabinet finally put its seal of approval on something so blatantly wrong as regularising this colony. And he'd put the entire government on the defensive if he named top IAS officers who have land in Anant Ram Dairy, or the fact that one member of the Cabinet threatened to have the NDMC chief transferred by the Home Minister if he didn't toe his line on Anant Ram Dairy. One can think of several examples of various ministers pushing case of favourites, and nothing untoward has happened to them, no references to the CBI or the CVC, or unkind remarks from the Attorney General. This paper reported on July 15, for instance, on how the minister of state for telecomTapan Sikdar and his boss Ram Vilas Paswan were trying to bail out the Essar Group's Evergrowth Telecom, but there's been no CBI probe on the matter. This is the scary thing about government, and this is why people suspect its motives. With the government ordering probes against those out of favour, and withholding them for those still in favour, after all, the scene does look a bit like out a Mario Puzo novel. Or should that be Machiavelli?
