Letter from Chennai: 'Loose cannon' Swamy targets Sonia

Dr Subramanian Swamy, the Janata Party President, and self-described "free cannon" is at it again.

He does not like to be described as "a loose cannon" but he is blasting away at his pet aversions, the chief among them being Sonia Gandhi, Congress party president and leader of the opposition in Parliament.

It would be easy to dismiss his verbal assaults as the ranting of a bitter, unsuccessful politician. But time and again his charges against his adversaries have drawn blood.

The Tansi case against Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa, initially filed by him in 1994 is still live and threatens to change Tamil Nadu politics. He somehow manages to dig up dirt, witness his current public interest petition in the Delhi High Court against Sonia Gandhi.

The man himself is an interesting study. He was born in a middle class family of Mullipallam Village in Sholavandan Taluka of Madurai in September 1939. His father had leftist leanings contrary to his son's rightist beliefs.

His father was a statistician working in the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi. He had his schooling in Delhi and passed out of Hindu College in 1957 with an Honours degree in Mathematics. He got his PhD in 1965 from Harvard University. From 1963 to 69 he was Teaching Fellow/Instructor /Assistant Professor at Harvard.

Thereafter he mixed his academic pursuits at Harvard - where he is still with the visiting faculty - with Indian politics. Between lecture stints at Harvard he began his political career as a member of the Jan Sangh (the origin of today's Bharatiya Janata Party) and then the Janata Party.

He broke with the Jan Sangh and has since stuck with the Janata Party. He has been its president for more than a decade now. He entered Rajya Sabha representing Uttar Pradesh in 1974. He got to Lok Sabha in 1977 representing North-East Mumbai for two terms. In 1988 he represented Madurai in the house.

Something of a maverick during the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, he dodged in and out of Parliament. Again when he attacked Jayalalithaa in her first spell as chief minister, he disguised himself and evaded arrest by flying out of Chennai.

He almost pulled off a coup of sorts when he got Jayalalithaa to pull the carpet from under the feet of the first BJP government. He possibly missed a plum political post then because Sonia Gandhi refused to share power. He was also a friend of both Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao.

Swamy's wife Roxna belongs to the Parsee community and is connected with the Petits. The father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah's wife Ruttee comes from the Petit family. Swamy has two daughters, the younger one is married to the son of former Indian foreign secretary Salman Haider.

He has written several books on economics and is considered to be something of an expert on Chinese economy. He speaks Chinese. He has visited China 10 times. From 1990-91 he was India's minister of commerce.

Over the years he has hit the headlines time and again. He has a long hate list topped by Sonia Gandhi, followed by Jayalalithaa - once his ally. Also on the list are Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, opposition leader Ramakrishna Hegde, LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, Dravida Kazhagam leader Veeramani, Congress party leader Arjun Singh, Jayalalithaa's friend Sasikala and even Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

As far as his Indian enemies are concerned, his favourite strategy is to file public interest petitions. He has quite a few of these in various courts including the Supreme Court at any given time.

Last week, at a press conference, he said that the Central Bureau of Investigation should interrogate Sonia Gandhi's mother, Paola Maino, and sister Anushka Vinci, "on the antique smuggling case regarding the ownership of two shops, Ganpati in Orbassano and Etnica in Rivolta, both in Italy. These have been found to be stocking priceless antique statues of gods and goddesses of Hindu temples, which are banned for export under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act".

He pointed out that the Delhi High Court had on November 20 last "ordered on my PIL that the CBI register an FIR (First Information Report) after determining the ownership of these two shops. Ms Maino and Ms Vinci have arrived in New Delhi on December 7 and are to spend one week from December 23 in Port Blair, Andaman Islands. Hence, the CBI will not have to travel to Italy for this purpose and can interrogate them in India."

He added that the CBI can also ask Maino about her connections with the LTTE "about which I have made averments in my PIL".

In his Delhi High Court PIL, he filed an affidavit in which he said that Sonia Gandhi's real name was Antonia Maino. He accused her of misleading the Parliament about her Cambridge University degree and about alleged connections with the USSR's KGB.

Part of the affidavit said: "The KGB money and the antique loot was huge and got deposited in Switzerland banks with the help of Ottavio Quattrocchi".

After Rajiv Gandhi's death, according to the affidavit, Sonia Gandhi became the sole beneficiary of a sum of some $2 billion! The veracity of these charges have yet to be proved in any court of law.

As for his barrage against Jayalalithaa, the Tansi case is awaiting the writing of a judgement in Supreme Court. It is two and a half months since the hearings in the case in the Apex Court ended, after a tortuous course since Swamy first filed his charges against her some eight years ago.

The judgement could have a bearing on Jayalalithaa's and the ruling AIADMK's political future since Jayalalithaa was convicted and sentenced for three years imprisonment on corruption charges by a lower court. The Madras High Court ruled against the lower court's verdict.

By virtue of this exoneration, Jayalalithaa was eligible to contest election and become chief minister for a third term. This judgement is what the Supreme Court has been pondering over.

In the meantime a bill to disqualify any person convicted by a court is awaiting passage in the Rajya Sabha after having been passed by Lok Sabha.