Home truths

The case of Home Minister L.K. Advani’s estranged daughter-in-law, Gauri Sabharwal Advani is getting curiouser and curiouser. When the Delhi police declined to register an FIR on the basis of her complaint that the Indian deputy high commissioner in London had tried to coerce her into granting a divorce to her husband Jayant, she petitioned the Delhi High Court. Last week the court ruled that Gauri should first fill out the preliminary inquiry sheet sent to her by the investigating authority if she was serious about the charge.

While it is yet to be decided whether an FIR can be filed in Delhi for an incident alleged to have taken place in London, a fresh complaint was registered at the Tilak Marg police station recently. Gauri, who left her husband and moved to London six years back, has filed a claim for return of her jewellry and wedding presents from her 1991 marriage, which she estimates at nearly Rs 3 crore. She has also alleged that she felt cheated as a practising Hindu to discover that her in-laws followed Sikh rituals. Even more curious than her charges was that the hug tab for her stay at a five star hotel during a recent visit to Delhi was picked up by a business house!

Outsider’s efforts

Efforts to bring about a patch up between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress emanate not from the UP Congress, whose members continue to issue anti-Mulayam statements, but from Natwar Singh. Natwar arranged the much- speculated-upon meeting between Sonia and Mulayam Singh’s lieutenant, Amar Singh, by inviting the later to a Rajiv Gandhi Foundation symposium on terrorism. The friendship between Natwar and Amar is of recent origin, but they have become so close that they even travelled together from Delhi to Gwalior in a private aircraft for Madhavrao Scindia’s funeral.

Natwar seems to have learnt some of the tricks of the trade from his friend. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, who is in charge of UP, deputy CM Subhash Yadav and M.L. Fotedar discovered to their chagrin on the commercial flight from Delhi to Lucknow for the sadbhavna rally all the J-class seats were booked and they had to travel cattle class. Natwar and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat had the forethought to have reserved their seats well in advance so that they could sit next to their party president Sonia Gandhi.

Citizens block

The proposal to block a small stretch of Delhi’s busy Talkatora Road merely so that our honourable MPs would be able to cross the road easily, since the newly constructed Parliament library and auditorium is on one side of the road and the Parliament House annexe on the other, goes back to the late ’80s. But each time the move was scuttled on the valid grounds that it would be a major inconvenience for westbound traffic. If good sense prevailed in the past it was because of the stiff resistance from the chiefs of the New Delhi Municipal Committee and the Delhi Police who were supported by the former minister for urban affairs, Jagmohan.

But at a meeting last week, Lok Sabha Speaker G.M.C. Balayogi managed to push through the preposterous proposal because he was squarely backed by Ananth Kumar, the new urban affairs minister. In fact, Kumar publicly instructed the secretary in his ministry not to open his mouth during the discussions. If the MPs eventually get their way then the Supreme Court could be encouraged to consider favourably a pending PIL urging protest marches not be permitted on Tilak Marg, a main artery from Old Delhi which adjoins the court.

Strong arm financing

Financial institutions may be publicly chided for their mounting NPAs, which account for over 20 per cent of their assets, but behind the scenes the government continues to arm twist public FIs into financing dubious high risk ventures. Last week the heads of several FIs were invited to a high level official meeting whose main purpose was to bail out a synthetic fabric mill in Assam which has a history of defaulting on repayment of loans. The FI head expressed their inability to finance the mill’s influential owner. But when they read the official minutes of the meeting they were in for a shock. The minutes stated that each one of them had agreed to provide loans to the company. In fact, the exact amount to be borrowed from each FI by the mill was also listed!

Sneaky tactics

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf made his conciliatory telephone call to Prime Minister Vajpayee recently reportedly on instructions from the US. Musharraf requested Vajpayee to keep the telephonic exchanges between the two government heads a secret. But less than two hours later the Indian government discovered to its irritation that news of Musharraf’s call had been leaked to the media from the Islamabad end. The PMO had to hastily summon a special press briefing at 11 pm to give its version.

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