Sukh Ram: The telecom years

When 83-year-old Sukh Ram, the oldest legislator in the country...

When 83-year-old Sukh Ram, the oldest legislator in the country with a record 12 poll wins in a 45-year-long political career, decided to retire last month, he had hoped it would be with a clean chit from the courts. That was not to be.

8220;The ruling is only a few months away,8221; says the man who was both at his zenith and nadir as Union communications minister. He is now loath to dwell on the darkest chapter of his life, one that will find a mention in the biography he plans to script once the poll dust settles down. 8220;Shanta Kumar wrote Adhure Safar Ki Poori Kahani, I will write Poore Safar Ki Adhoori Kahani,8221; he chuckles.

He has just returned from addressing a rally for his son and political heir Anil Sharma. Going back to the day when his homes were raided in 1996, he says, 8220;By the time I returned from the US, I had been branded the biggest criminal in India.8221;

Sukh Ram, who had earlier won a libel suit of 50,000 pounds from a British magazine that called him corrupt, had turned into a political pariah overnight when CBI allegedly found sacksful of notes from his home just when he was being toasted as a minister who had unleashed the communications revolution in the country. Thrown out of the Congress and slapped with graft charges, he reinvented himself at the helm of the Himachal Vikas Party, whose five seats helped to enthrone BJP in the hill state in 1998.

Now back in the Congress, it8217;s the change he wrought during his four-year stint as a communications minister that makes him beam. 8220;When I took over, 40 lakh people were on the BSNL waiting list with the wait stretching from one to 10 years.8221; Sukh Ram ended the wait by inviting MNCs to introduce the latest technology in the country. 8220;This created such a furore that the then BJP-led Opposition brought Parliament to a halt for 13 days,8221; he recalls. Later, they approached the Supreme Court with the allegation that he had shown special favours to a Himachal-based telecom company, but was exonerated by the court.

The man who has an impressive command over both communications technology and jargon, laughs as he remembers how he ensured the best for his state. 8220;Do you know that 98 per cent of the phone exchanges here are connected with optical fibre chord or that we got a separate base station 11 years ago? The capacity I have created won8217;t be utilised in a 100 years,8221; he claims. 8220;People used to laugh when I said one day the phone would ring in their pockets, but from mobile to Internet, everything was introduced during my time,8221; he says, telling you how he made the first call from his mobile to CPM stalwart Jyoti Basu.

Officially, he may have retired, but his brain is as fertile as ever. 8220;I have a two-pronged plan to tackle unemployment in Himachal. 8220;Tap the five rivers of the state for power and take to forestry on the hills.8221;

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And yes, he has fatherly dreams as well, though he is quick to add: 8220;I hope my son wins by the dint of his own work.8221;

As for his biography, he will wait for the court cases to be over. 8220;I can fight legal cases, but how will I ever wipe out the prejudice created in the minds?8221; That remains his last challenge.