By Faraz Ahmad
While CBI Director Ranjit Sinha is pursuing relentlessly the numerous Gujarat fake encounter cases against Intelligence Bureau (IB) Special Director Rajendra Kumar and his IB subordinates as well any number of Gujarat Police officers, some absconding like former Joint Commissioner of Ahmedabad Police P P Pandey, Arun Jaitley must be laughing in his sleeve, telling Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi,”I told you so.”
Remember, when the Government decided to appoint Sinha as the Director of the premier investigating agency of the country last November, as Leaders of Opposition in Parliament Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj wrote a joint letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on November 23 objecting to Sinha’s appointment. The letter read, “The appointment should not have been done when the Rajya Sabha Select Committee on the Lokpal Bill had recommended that such appointments should be made through the collegium system.” Immediately the next day the now expelled BJP MP Ram Jethmalani challenged the BJP contention sending a strongly worded letter to the then BJP president Nitin Gadkari praising the UPA government decision to appoint Ranjit Sinha and in turn attacking the BJP for backing “the most undesirable rival (read Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar). In his letter leaked to the media, Jethmalani said, “…I was astonished to read that the BJP has attacked the Prime Minister and the Congress party for what the party calls the fast-tracked appointment of Mr Ranjit Sinha as Director of the CBI.”
Modi, Jaitley, and Gadkari. [TCN file photo]
Jethmalani castigated the two Leaders of Opposition Sushma and Jaitley further saying, “I regret that this criticism is a result of a complete ignorance of relevant facts and has been instigated by a most undesirable rival, who had to withdraw his petition before the CAT yesterday as a result of the appointment.” Jethmalani included, everyone in the legal circles knew that Neeraj Kumar had petitioned the Central Administrative Tribunal to block Ranjit Sinha’s promotion and Arun Jaitley’s juniors were pleading his case in the CAT. Jethmalani who was backed till then by a whole lot of BJP leaders including Jaitley, Modi and naturally Advani in his campaign to prevent Gadkari getting a second term, had to bear the heat of targeting his onetime junior and now his leader in the Upper House, Jaitley. The BJP Parliamentary Board immediately suspended Ram Jethmalani also issuing him the very next day a show cause notice asking him to reply within ten days why he should not be expelled from the primary membership of the party. It is another thing though that soon thereafter, perhaps because of the intervention of his old friend and mentor LK Advani, Gadkari forgot all about it and the matter was revived only by his successor Rajnath Singh six months later also as a reaction to Jethmalani’s insinuations against Jaitely and Sushma in the parliamentary party meeting during the last Budget session of the Parliament.
In effect Narendra Modi and Advani succeeded in reinducting Jethmalani, a founder member of the party, into the BJP and even persuading Vasundhara Raje to back him for Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan in spite of Jaitley notwithstanding the fact that Raje is generally disdainful of Modi. But Modi pushed for Ram because he banked upon Jethmalani to successfully defend his then Minister of State for Home Amit Shah accused of complicity in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case.
Eventually Jehtmalani arrived in the Rajya Sabha with the BJP backing, thumbing his nose at Jaitley. Once inside he did not restrict his tirade against Jaitely alone for they share a love hate relationship for long, he did not spare Gadkari, Sushma and Rajnath either. The only two holy cows for him in this two and half year brief stint with the BJP were Lalkishanji and Narendrabhai. When the party was getting ready to expel Ram a Jaitley camp follower remarked in good humour to another BJP leader, “So when will you take him back for the fourth time?” highlighting the BJP’s ability to repeat the same mistake N number of times. Be that as it may, had it not been for Jethmalani none even in the Government would have dared to highlight the conflict of interest of the Leader of Opposition in objecting to Ranjit Sinha’s appointment and even if some Congress leader like Kapil Sibal may have raised the issue, it would have fallen flat on the ears of tweeting, SMSing NAMO enthusiasts, dismissing this as one more canard from the “corrupt Congress.” But Jethmalani literally silenced Jaitely and left all the NAMO howlers too confused to react.
In the process Sinha managed to consolidate his position in the CBI and in spite of being riled and humiliated by the Supreme Court on the Coalgate issue, doggedly pursued the case of Ishrat Jehan fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004 and the 2003 Sadiq Jamal fake encounter case also of Gujarat. He is now breaking at the leash to expose the nexus between a section of the IB and the Gujarat government. Mind you we are talking of a period when LK Advani was the country’s Home Minster and in charge of the IB and when he was backing Narendra Modi to the hilt. The then Director of IB Ajit Doval is currently heading the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) created by Advani and therefore it is not beyond the pale of imagination to believe that IB and Gujarat Police were working in tandem in all these fake encounters also because each time the victims of fake encounters were purportedly coming at the instance of some Pakistan based terrorist outfit like Lashkar-e-Taiba of Harkatul Mujhaideen (HuJ) to kill either Modi or Advani or both simultaneously but none other! In effect the exercise aimed primarily at pushing these two great leaders up the pedestal as Lauh Purush I and II respectively.
Ravi Shankar Prasad who led the campaign against Lalu Prasad will bear me out that the BJP has had a problem with Ranjit Sinha investigating the fodder scam even then and it banked on U N Biswas, the man who called up the Army to arrest Lalu Prasad, in Bihar and the then CBI Director Joginder Singh (intimately associated with the saffron brigade ever since) in Delhi, to fix Lalu Prasad. Had Jethmalani not punctured Jaitley’s attack against Sinha, by now the BJP would have successfully forced Sinha to retreat in the fake encounter case. But Jethmalani pulled the rug from under the BJP feet and strengthened Ranjit Sinha’s position, in turn firming up his resolve to nail the Gujarat Police-IB nexus and woebegone Modi and his apologists including Jaitely have been silenced. Had Modi consulted Jaitely and refrained from pushing for Jethmalani’s reinstatement in the BJP, it would not have weakened Jaitely’s case against the CBI. And the ultimate sufferers in this case are Modi and Advani. This would have left a smirk on Jaitely’s face.
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Faraz Ahmad a senior Delhi-based journalist, with leading English daily He can be contacted at [email protected]