by Jaya Jaitly
George Fernandes was completely puzzled as he had not known of the existence of Santushti, I had never mentioned such a thing, and the file for change of land use had not been put before him. There was obviously some politics and speculative games taking place within the Ministry. Defence wives were seeking an appointment with the minister. Even the environmental activist M.C. Mehta’s name came up in the matter. I knew nothing of all this at the time but it must have been presumed by those who didn’t want to hand over the space, that a controversy could prevent it. While there was nothing one could do to deny it, such a story was enough to plant a seed in many people’s minds that some wrongdoing on my part was entirely possible. Eventually, it was a damp squib because Santushti was never taken away from the AFWWA but the minor tamasha or show got me some unwanted phokat mein prachar.
A similar story appeared when the Tibetan settlements in Dehradun and Chakrata invited me to accompany George Fernandes on a visit which was more of a social and goodwill visit so that I could go to a Tibetan veteran’s noodle-making factory, a children’s school and a carpet production establishment. George Sahib was to witness some special acrobatics and physical feats by the border forces which comprised many Tibetans. The whole trip was ridiculously harmless. The Tibetan community has always treated me as a solid comrade-in-arms and would have been shocked that my visit was to be later painted in the press as a trip by a Mata Hari to a spy establishment. Only Left-oriented journalists could have cooked up that gem.
The excitable gossip mongers’ chase had more to offer. Towards mid-August 1998, my son Akshay was to get married in France to a French girl, which needed a certificat de celibat to legally ensure he was not married to anyone else. He was working in Japan and had to go directly to France but the certificate had to be obtained from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in India. An official from the MEA, working in the Ministry of Defence, was kind enough to oblige in the absence of my son, since everyone knew he was not already married. This was enough for the news to spread in scorpion circles that a wedding was in the offing.
My son, who is now a corporate lawyer, bought economy tickets for me and his sister. His father paid for his own. We all set off for Paris and Normandy with presents worth exactly eight thousand rupees bought from Cottage Industries Emporium for the entire, very large, French family. My daughter and I wore our old Kanjeevaram saris with no zari on them. We didn’t wish to look like Christmas trees at the wedding, as Indians are usually, perhaps, perceived to appear. My daughter-in-law confided in me when we reached her home that she had got herself a wedding dress made of fine white paper. Her mother had spent something like €5000 on it mainly because of the designer’s fee. After all, it was only paper. She was worried I would disapprove. Instead, I loved the idea. The eccentricity and quirkiness of it was just up my street. Or so I thought. Soon enough, a news piece titled ‘Jaya Jaitly’s daughter-in-law was wearing a wedding dress costing half a million dollars’ appeared on the Internet, which was still an unfamiliar medium for us. Not only that, but George Fernandes received an anonymous letter at his desk in Delhi saying that I had taken a bribe of fifty lakh rupees to be spent on my son’s wedding in France. What could anybody do but ignore it?
The Indian version of Akshay’s wedding followed, Kerala style, with minimum expense under a tree at Kashmir House at the end of December 1998. There was a modest reception inside where Aditi offered a Bharatnatyam performance for the guests on a small stage prepared for the purpose. No pandal, no fat contractors, no exchange of voluminous gifts, just lunch and fun in the winter sun. No fanfare, no press, only a large contingent of French in-laws, who enjoyed henna on their hands, glass bangles, gajra (flowers) in their hair, Indian attire, and trips to Agra in the heavy fog.
But, and there always is a ‘but’; George Sahib, then the Defence Minister, had dismissed Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, head of the Indian Navy, the same day as the wedding. Since he was pre-occupied with all this, he barely stepped in to greet the couple for a moment. A huge controversy unfolded in many phases. This included Ms Jayalalithaa, supremo politician of Tamil Nadu, using the sacking as an excuse to topple the first NDA government. It was a strange situation where I couldn’t figure out when a person was a friend and when a foe and went back to being a friend again—but, I digress.
The repercussions, however, landed on me like an unexpected tonne of bricks and spun into an uninvited battle between two completely unconnected women instead of a clash between a cabinet minister and the seniormost naval officer in his Ministry. It had something to do with his obstructing decisions and wishes of the minister and somewhere compromising security matters. The details are probably well-documented in the ministry and elsewhere. Mrs Niloufer Bhagwat jumped into the battle by choosing me as a target to defend her husband, as his lawyer. It started with an accusation that the defence minister always insisted I should be invited to every social function of the defence brass. She made cheap allegations about my character not realizing that irrespective of whether I was Mother Teresa or Monica Lewinsky, it had no connection with her husband’s situation. Madhu Trehan did an interview with Mrs Bhagwat, which appeared in Hindustan Times on 10 January 1999, where instead of answering the questions, she made some unconnected remarks about me. I protested to the Hindustan Times, asking how they could publish such indecent remarks. They published my letter on 18 January and responded with an apology stating:
The comment was retained as it showed the personal and petty level to which the dispute between the admiral and the minister was descending. The interviewer’s next question was aimed to show that Mrs Bhagwat was straying and not replying to what she asked. However, we understand Ms Jaitly’s anguish, and apologise for any offence caused.—Editor
Mrs Bhagwat did not stop her tirade. She spoke with many voices; of a wife, and as a politician, by drawing attention to herself as half-Muslim being victimized by a communal government for having participated in the Sri Krishna Commission of Inquiry into the Bombay riots. She attacked us, as his lawyer, in an unconnected case against a Sikh naval officer, accusing the NDA and the Akali Dal of favouring Sikhs and thereby exposing their communal attitudes. She then implied George Sahib was favouring a Christian when Admiral Sushil Kumar, who was appointed in Bhagwat’s place, turned out to be a Christian by sheer coincidence. She fell silent on that soon enough. It happened in a very funny way. A reporter even asked Admiral Sushil Kumar why he had dropped his surname, Isaac. Till then even the defence minister had no clue as to his religious identity which surely is of no concern when assessing a person’s seniority and competence. Her next accusation was that ‘all naval appointments were bought and sold’. She accused George Fernandes and his associates of being ‘temperamentally low’ because they followed Jayaprakash Narayan who had supposedly asked the armed forces to revolt. She further declared her husband’s sacking as ‘worse than the Emergency’. The media, as is its wont, played her up and complimented Bhagwat for his graceful restraint.
I took my role seriously as a representative and de facto spokesperson to defend the NDA and its politics as well as governance. I refused to be painted as some shady mistress attached behind the scenes to the coat strings of a ‘nasty’ defence minister of ‘low character’. My article titled ‘Wife, Lawyer, Politician or Mouthpiece?’ appeared on 4 February 1999 in The Pioneer in response to her diatribes, always spiced by snipes at me. She fell silent after that, but Vishnu Bhagwat soon donned a politician’s hat and landed on election campaign platforms organized by the CPI in Nalanda, haranguing George Fernandes at every opportunity. Nothing worked in their favour. They faded from sight, the opposition dropped them and the media moved on.
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All the accusations made by Mrs Bhagwat became the checklist of allegations Tehelka built into their elaborately planned sting called Operation West End, aimed at bringing George Fernandes and the NDA government down. In that, Tehelka finds a character who supposedly tells them all about corruption in defence m
atters because he lives near the naval barracks in Bombay. The purchase of missiles or ships, and the Barak deal issue dragged in A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and George Fernandes. They made any unsuspecting character a defence dealer crawling out of nowhere, one of whom was supposed to have claimed that I got two per cent on each file that was signed, or that I was the ‘suitcase’ woman of the defence minister. All the usual innuendoes of me being a second wife, companion, live-in partner, and co-conspirator in corruption were seeds planted in Tehelka’s flowerpot by the verbal onslaught Mrs Bhagwat had let loose. As usual, it was cherchez la femme, the very French, very sexist expression that indicates a woman is the indispensable ingredient that leads to every great man’s achievements or downfall.
To be fair, however, there was an added non-sexist dimension here. When Mulayam Singh Yadav was defence minister, Amar Singh was his party’s general secretary. It was widely rumoured, with no evidence to prove it, that he was the go-to man to ‘facilitate’ decisions. Delhi abounds with such defamatory allegations to which I no longer pay attention. Theirs was not a party ever short of money as was the Samata Party which could often not pay its monthly telephone bills of four thousand rupees at the Party office. People cannot be faulted for automatically presuming the next incumbent and the general secretary followed the same alleged system. Rajeev Shukla, now cricket honcho and Congress party loyalist, was then an independent member of the Rajya Sabha, hoping to be made a junior minister in the NDA. Anyone wanting such things arrived at the Fernandes house to lobby. If he was busy, they found me. One day, he struck a conversation with me starting like this:
‘Jayaji, you and George are among the most popular and in-demand people in Delhi to meet.’
‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘Do you know that people are willing to pay twenty lakh rupees to have a cup of tea with you?’
‘Good God, whatever for?’
‘Well, if they want to show they are close to the person who is close to the minister, it gives them an advantage outside among defence commission agents. They will show they have spent half an hour in this house having tea with you. It cuts the competition. Even if you don’t help them, it helps them,’ Rajeev very kindly explained. The whole procedure seemed an elaborate sham enacted between aspiring defence dealers.
That is how I heard about this sordid world of defence deals and commissions and realized Delhi was teeming with people who turn into serpents and scorpions at the sound of money. Having been uncomprehending of the world of business, negotiations, percentages and murkiness, I blanked out and remained oblivious to such things, not bothering to engage my mind with such unpleasant talk. I soon realized that many defunct old socialists, Party workers, perfumed ladies in chiffons, young smart alecks and an assorted range of people kept asking for time to meet me. I politely met the political characters I knew but froze when the topic of their conversation veered towards some ‘file’ that had been cleared but ‘just needed George Sahib’s signature’. This is it, I thought. Even offering tea had become dangerous. Not a single person’s request was either forwarded to or mentioned to George Fernandes at any time. Anyone in the Ministry would swear to that. In fact, they did, when officers were later asked formally in the Inquiry Commission and court, they confirmed I had never made any request or engaged with the Ministry at any time. Occasionally, if I happened to meet George Sahib, I would mention the names of colleagues who seemed to be turning into sharks circling the premises hoping to make money from ‘a cup of tea’. He would growl and avoid them like the plague. This created a batch of disgruntled ‘friends’. The real dealers or commission agents as they are called in polite circles, were well hidden, I presumed.
I must correct myself. One did emerge.
Soon after the Pokhran nuclear missile test, India was in the doghouse among certain countries. George Fernandes started wooing Japan through his old socialist friends there. While counting friends there were many discussions on who would reach out to India-friendly groups in the US Congress and Senate. I received a call from a foreigner who gave his name as Christian Michel. He said he wanted to meet the minister to assist in ways to lobby with these groups in the US. He gave Naresh Chandra, the then India’s Ambassador in the US, as a reference to his credentials. I said I would pass the message on. George Fernandes rang Naresh Chandra in Washington DC. He sounded slightly uncertain but did affirm that he knew him. Presuming it was a strictly diplomatic strategy to be discussed, George Fernandes decided to make me the sounding board till he could figure out what was going on. I agreed to meet Michel and he suggested the IIC lounge as the meeting venue. When I met him, he had a badge saying PRESS, and a magazine on some advanced aircraft stuff—Dassault, I think—on the coffee table. He patted both and said, ‘This is for cover.’
Eek, I thought to myself, what is this cloak-and-dagger operation?
‘Cover?’ I ventured, curiously.
He came out with a long tale on how he had been an informant for years, and claimed to have helped Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao keep tabs on Sonia Gandhi whenever she visited London. He opened up one of those electronic diaries that fancy people had those days, to show me times, dates, places and people he had met in London. He may have been fabricating all this in trying to establish his credibility. I was disinterested in this information and didn’t utter a word. I was trying to see what he was getting at.
Michel then tried to educate me on all the real defence dealers who operated in India and the bureaucrats they had in their pockets. He mentioned the Choudhury brothers and a former Admiral. (I had never heard of them at that time but their names cropped up in conversations later in the Tehelka tapes. Significantly, Tehelka never went to their homes or offices because its stories consisted of sham dealers, agents, companies and offers. But I get ahead and need to rewind.)
Michel then blatantly offered me the opportunity to make a huge pile of money for the Party. I guessed it was positioned as a quid pro quo for some favour to Dassault.
I said, ‘We do not do such things.’
‘How will you run your Party?’ he asked, slightly condescendingly.
I got a little riled at that. ‘I would rather beg in the streets,’ I replied.
I kept my cool in front of so many people in the IIC lounge but beat a hasty retreat, reporting the entire story to George Fernandes the same evening. He told me to write it out in a letter in full detail and send it to the Defence Secretary. I did so the next day. Neither did I get any acknowledgement nor am I aware if any action followed. George Fernandes had too much on his plate to keep any of this in his mind as the Kargil War soon followed.
Michel managed to get my home number after that and called half a dozen times to revive the conversation, but I refused to meet him or discuss anything.
When the Tehelka allegations struck in mid-March 2001, with all its immediate repercussions, I received a fax from Michel, saying: ‘Dear Mrs Jaitly, I am so sorry about what has happened. I warned you about them. Sincerely, Michel.’ The fax remained in my files for a long time, till it faded, as fax papers did then.
The next time the name Michel appeared it was in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal* in which the Congress was accused of shady dealings. Christian Michel and Guido Haschke were the middlemen named by the court in Milan.** Was this the son, or the same man? I have no idea, nor do I want to know.
*‘AgustaWestland: CBI, ED mount aggressive hunt for Christian Michel’, 11 December, 2016 Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52017280.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
**See http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/I-am-victim-of-quotpolitical-conspiracyquot-says-alleged-VVIP-chopper-middleman/article14262539.ece; and http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/vvip-chopper-scam-christian-michel-the-man-who-flew-away-with-rs-330-crore/articleshow/52001253.cms
17
GOOD AND BAD MATCH-FIXING
Tehelka Sting I
CONSPIRACIES AGAIN
ST PEOPLE PERCEIVED TO be in ‘power’ are meticulously planned and have a carefully orchestrated process. The perpetrators are efficient, stealthy, networked and rich. It is easy to go after unsuspecting innocents and paint them as criminals. With ample help from a blood-thirsty media, a gullible and inflammable public and the cynical adage that ‘politics is not about fact, it is about perception’, they always have an advantage.
On 22 June 2000, George Fernandes, Digvijay Singh and I were on a morning flight to Rajkot to attend a state Samata Party conference. The Times of India was at hand. On the very front page was a small column headed, ‘Jadeja fixes a good match’. It stated categorically that ‘cricket star Ajay Jadeja has married Aditi Jaitly, the daughter of Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly, in a secret wedding’ (see photo section). A ‘close friend from the ITC golf course’ is quoted as saying, ‘Jadeja confessed that he has married Aditi’ with additional information about him keeping it a secret because he planned to make a film with Sonali Bendre and it would ‘affect his star status’. We were stunned. My daughter was in London for a dance performance. Ajay was there for a match, I think, and of course they had been classmates at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya and good friends since the age of eleven, but they had been extremely careful not to flaunt their friendship in an age where a celebrity’s personal life is front-page material for voyeurs. Family respect and propriety within honest, liberal attitudes were values we brought up our children with. For a very brief second, I was hurt that my daughter would get married behind my back. I was instantly ashamed of losing faith in her openness, but if I had momentarily faltered, why would the media and public not believe it? I called Aditi in London as soon as we landed in Rajkot, where the media obviously made our poor Samata Party conference secondary to this.