Letter from Delhi: Mayawati SOS to Vajpayee goes unheard

Two days before she actually broke the BSP-BJP alliance, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minster sent an SOS to both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

A senior BJP leader from UP conveyed Mayawati's urgent message. Simply put, the message said, "Get CBI off my back in the Taj corridor case or else it would be the end of the alliance."

Vajpayee and Advani made it plain that there was no question of their influencing the CBI investigations ordered, in the first place, not by the Government but by the highest court in the land. That effectively spelt the end of the third BSP-BJP alliance which lasted nearly 15 stormy months and left both sides bitter and angry against each other.

Mayawati had hoped to brazen out the Taj corridor scandal by shifting the blame on senior bureaucrats. She had in fact suspended the Environment Secretary, a senior IAS officer, immediately upon the scandal first hitting the headlines.

But when the CBI grilled her trusted confidante, the State Environment and Excise Minister, Nasimuddin Siddiqui, she reckoned that full investigations might leave her vulnerable since the Rs1.7b project to build shops and emporia around the world-renowned mausoleum in Agra bore her imprimatur. She was the one who had personally given the go-ahead to the project. The relevant file was now with the CBI.

Two days before the end of the alliance, Siddiqui was grilled intensively by the CBI at an undisclosed place in UP for four hours. He was hard put to explain the interpolations he had made in the official file as an after-thought in order to blot out his role in sanctioning the project and in releasing the first tranche of Rs20 crores. No tenders were floated to implement the project.

The cover of a public sector construction company was used to hand over the entire project to a private Delhi firm. Siddiqui, it was common knowledge in UP political circles, was the chosen lieutenant of Mayawati to do deals on her behalf. He brokered the big deals and handled her monies.

Earlier wearing his hat as the Excise Minister, he had brokered a deal involving an underhand payment of over Rs2b for bending the excise policy in favour of country liquor manufacturers in the State.

Mayawati, daughter of a MTNL lineman living in a west Delhi shanty colony, was a primary school teacher before becoming a politician. The transformation in her fortunes can be gauged from the fact that only a couple of months ago a mansion in the capital's exclusive diplomatic enclave, Chanakyapuri, was bought for over Rs280m (which was the registered price while the actual price could be much higher). The house had belonged to the old Urdu press owners, the Dehlvis.

A tacit understanding

There is an old line in a Hindi novel which translated means that what appears on the surface does not exist and what does not appear on the surface exists – Jo dikhta hain, woh nahin hain, jo dikhta nahin hain woh hain. Well, that statement characterises the relationship between the top BJP leadership and the Samajwadi Party duo of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh.

Contrary to the general impression that the two parties, one Hindu-centric, the other Muslim-centric, cannot do business together, the truth is that their senior leaders have had a very cosy relationship.

The Prime Minister replying to the debate on the no-confidence motion hinted at the cosy arrangement when he condemned the excise raids by the Mayawati Government on the factory of a leading Samajwadi Party functionary.

But the moment Mayawati snapped ties with the BJP, it was clear to the top leaders in both the BJP and the SP that Mulayam Singh Yadav had the blessings of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to form the next government in Lucknow.

For, it was agreed between the two leaderships that Yadav, while maintaining his stridently secular stance in public and thus criticising the Sangh parivar in the most vehement of terms, would do nothing to break the BJP legislature party in UP, and not persecute and prosecute the Sangh parivar leaders.

Exclusion from list

The short-listing of names for nominations to the Rajya Sabha has inevitably caused heart-burn among those who have failed to make the grade. Former deputy editor of India Today Swapan Dasgupta might have taken his exclusion from the list in his stride, but at least two aspirants, one of them an editor of a Sangh parivar publication, and another close to the Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani and his Man Friday, chartered accountant, S. Gurumurthy, are rather sore at the denial of a place in the Rajya Sabha.

Princely past

Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has not shed his princely pretensions. That would explain why he is so deferential to the Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. When the Punjab CM, who is the former maharaja of Patiala arrived, Finance Ministry officials noticed how the Minister laid out the red carpet for him.

And at the end of the visit, Singh went down to the car of the Punjab CM to see him off, a courtesy not extended to other CMs who routinely come calling.