Bharat Rakshak

Muppalla wrote:

csharma wrote:Muppalla,

Digvijay’s latest: Advani helped RSS infiltrate government, media

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Digvijay- ... 35231.aspx

So the validation for what I wrote is coming via mainstream media. I don't even need to say that I collected from blogs and chatter. Digvijay is very very frustrated and he is now vomiting.

ShivaS wrote:Rahul Mehata is the Man of the year of BR. He has been shouting from t he roof tops how entrenched the corruption is in Indian public life. The sapte of Armed forces involved in scams is also shocking and takes the sheen away from the utopian notion that there are institutions that are still intact and islands of integrity. Keep it up Rahul, one day one day a visionary leader will emerge and rescue India, I hope it will be during my life time...

Mauli wrote:Are Atal and Advani Ram-Laxman?. Do you think Ranjan B. and Pramod Mahajan collected money without the consent from Atal Ji?.

Christopher Sidor wrote:Supreme court has given an order to monitor the CBI probe into 2G spectrum. But the meat of the news is that this probe will also include the 2000/2001 decision to provide USAL licenses to Reliance and TATA. Guys you have to hand it to the congress. If Manmohan and Pranab are going to questioned in any investigation then so will Atal and Advani also. While BJP might hang Promod Mahajan as well as Arun Shourie, it is going to be very skittish about the two stalwarts of BJP. Reliance and TATA will now fight tooth and nail against any significant decision to clean up the 2G mess. And they will have the backing of some very very powerful entrenched economic interests. We can now expect the BJP to stop stalling the parliament. Without BJPs support the other opposition parties will be toothless and not be able to do much. Even if a JPC probe is constituted, Congress and BJP will make sure that it is a meaningless exercise, whose mandate will be restricted and whose power is even more limited. I even expect that the 2G furor will be suppressed by the next years budget session. It will be business as usual with people in power and with corruption as norm. Strom in a tea cup as they say.

ShivaS wrote:Rahul Mehata is the Man of the year of BR. He has been shouting from t he roof tops how entrenched the corruption is in Indian public life. The sapte of Armed forces involved in scams is also shocking and takes the sheen away from the utopian notion that there are institutions that are still intact and islands of integrity. Keep it up Rahul, one day one day a visionary leader will emerge and rescue India, I hope it will be during my life time...

A team of 10 CBI officers and two Enforcement Directorate officials raided the south Delhi residence of Radia around 7am and questioned her for over 10 hours. The office of Vaishnavi Communications in central Delhi, which Radia heads, was also raided. “We asked her about the phone conversations as well,” an officer said.

Christopher Sidor wrote:Supreme court has given an order to monitor the CBI probe into 2G spectrum. But the meat of the news is that this probe will also include the 2000/2001 decision to provide USAL licenses to Reliance and TATA.

Guys you have to hand it to the congress. If Manmohan and Pranab are going to questioned in any investigation then so will Atal and Advani also. While BJP might hang Promod Mahajan as well as Arun Shourie, it is going to be very skittish about the two stalwarts of BJP. Reliance and TATA will now fight tooth and nail against any significant decision to clean up the 2G mess. And they will have the backing of some very very powerful entrenched economic interests.

We can now expect the BJP to stop stalling the parliament. Without BJPs support the other opposition parties will be toothless and not be able to do much. Even if a JPC probe is constituted, Congress and BJP will make sure that it is a meaningless exercise, whose mandate will be restricted and whose power is even more limited.

I even expect that the 2G furor will be suppressed by the next years budget session. It will be business as usual with people in power and with corruption as norm. Strom in a tea cup as they say.

New Delhi, Dec 9 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Thursday welcomed the Supreme Court widening the 2G spectrum allotment probe to 2001, but said it would continue to press for a JPC probe into the scam during parliament’s budget session early next year.

“The Supreme Court yesterday extended the ambit of probe into the 2G spectrum controversy to decisions taken in 2001. We welcome it,” BJP leader S.S. Ahluwalia told reporters here.

Despite the Supreme Court directive, the opposition has been unrelenting in its demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC)
probe into the scam, stalling the winter session of parliament which began Nov 9 for the 20th successive day Thursday. There are just two more days to the session.

According to Ahluwalia, during the meeting of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee with opposition parties Nov 22 on the demand for a JPC probe, the DMK representative had said that his party had no problems with this provided it examines the telecom ministry’s decisions from 1998.

“We had agreed to the suggestion,” Ahluwalia said.

He said the AIADMK representative said the probe should start from 1994 and his party had agreed to that demand too.

“We demand that the entire inquiry be done by a JPC. There is no such provision that if the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) is looking into a case, then JPC cannot look into it,” he said, adding that there were precedents when both CBI and JPC had probed a case.

Referring to recorded conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia relating to the 2G spectrum allocation, the BJP leader said that only a JPC can examine the tapes.

“The 5,811 conversations that have been recorded by an investigating agency can be seen by no other committee except JPC,” Ahluwalia maintained.

“We will carry our struggle (for a JPC) to the streets and if the government does not agree, we will return in the budget session with the same demand,” he said.

The budget session usually begins in the last week of February.

rkirankr wrote:Mupalla,

If this is the case , why couldn't it help NDA to power in 2009? Just curious.

ShivaS wrote:Rahul Mehata is the Man of the year of BR.

He has been shouting from t he roof tops how entrenched the corruption is in Indian public life.
The sapte of Armed forces involved in scams is also shocking and takes the sheen away from the utopian notion that there are institutions that are still intact and islands of integrity.

Keep it up Rahul, one day one day a visionary leader will emerge and rescue India, I hope it will be during my life time...

***
Ratan Tata lived true to the tradition of trading merchants...

recall from Mangal Pandey how a Parsi merchant supplies beef tallow for the cartridges to the EIC to be given to the soldiers...

We went from one of the smallest phone networks in the world to one of the 2nd biggest in the world. We are currently the fastest growing mobile networks in the world. In-spite of this we did not encourage industries to make switches, mobile phones, servers , billing systems for this growth. No. Rather a significant chunk of the capital expenditure for our telecom industry, went to foreign companies and especially to the Chinese manufacturers. We are in fact sustaining our enemy's manufacturing base. When 2G could have been the opportunity to kick start our own domestic manufacturing and R&D into telecom products and services we did not. We did the same with 3G and BWA auction. ....

Continuing his war of words with Ratan Tata, Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday alleged that contrary to claims of probity, the Tata group got spectrum allocated out of turn through a change in policy to allow dual technology.

After that, things started began go wrong. Chandrasekhar did one great mistake in his life that he should not have done………. And because of this mistake he never quiet recovered.

The mistake was to get involved with what was known as “Batata Conglomerate”. Kumar Mangalam Birla, Ratan Tata and AT& T decided to come together to create a new Company that would be professionally managed and would have no controlling shareholder.

ramana wrote:Muppalla,
About your description of the Chankaya system, its one view of whats happening.

If you step back further you see that since Independence the INC thru the UPSC right from setting exam questions to interview process ensured that only a certain type of individual, well versed in,the syncretic dogma of JNU gets into the govt services like IAS/IPS and the Armed Forces. Check out the UPSC board members background and look at the exam questions over last four decades. It was this caderization of the govt service that ensured the INC rule over the last decades.

Its no wonder that NK Singh, Thomas, Raman all see no difference between India and INC and especially the Nehru-Gandhi Family.

Right now R Chandrasekhar is batting for PMO regardless of who supported him early on.

In hindsight doesnt Tata's earlier claim about not paying some measly bribe to some unnamed minister in Civil Aviation ring hollow now? Who cares about his early caution when he is neck deep in the 2-G scam?

We may not like but V P Singh did a fantastic job.

Christopher Sidor wrote:Anmol ji, as you had pointed out TRAI had recommended back in 2001, "So TRAI recommended such BSOs to pay penalty for providing "full mobile service" for which they didn't have license." This was not done.

Christopher Sidor wrote:Or the loophole should have been closed. Even that was done. Ideally licenses for those operators which were providing mobility under the "call transfer" loophole should have been cancelled. But it was not. So in other words a fragrant violation of the spirit and intent of the policy was done.
The ouster of Promod Mahajan was done after BSNL stopped the routing of calls for the other full mobility service providers to compel them to accept calls from other limited service providers. Arun Shourie was bought in his place. But he also continued to carry out in the same path as Promod Mahajan did.

Christopher Sidor wrote:Right now congress is claiming that the decisions taken by the telecom ministry, was in line with the decisions taken by the 2000/2001 license to provide full mobility to the limited mobility providers.

Christopher Sidor wrote:And to a point they were right. In fact in those days TRAI, DoT and other ministers were all behaving as if they were the hand maiden of a particular industrial group. Right now Raja and other people were doing the same for certain other groups.

Christopher Sidor wrote:When TRAI gave the recommendation, to convert limited mobility to full mobility, GoI put a petition in ALL the courts of India to prevent anyone from taking the legal recourse to block the ruling. Can you recall any one instance post-independence when GoI put a petition in all the courts of this country overnight?

Christopher Sidor wrote:Not unless and until they accept responsibility for what happened under their dispensation. Corrupt Congress has not changed, though they can claim that the corruption was done by members of some other party.

Christopher Sidor wrote:The problem with this 2G spectrum case is that one of the glaring facts is getting over looked. We went from one of the smallest phone networks in the world to one of the 2nd biggest in the world. We are currently the fastest growing mobile networks in the world. In-spite of this we did not encourage industries to make switches, mobile phones, servers , billing systems for this growth. No. Rather a significant chunk of the capital expenditure for our telecom industry, went to foreign companies and especially to the Chinese manufacturers. We are in fact sustaining our enemy's manufacturing base. When 2G could have been the opportunity to kick start our own domestic manufacturing and R&D into telecom products and services we did not. We did the same with 3G and BWA auction. The same is sought to be repeated for the power sector where L&T's domestic base is getting under-utilized, just so that Chinese manufacturers of thermal power station equipments can benefit. Ditto is going to be the case of the Solar power mission, which has a target of about 20,000 MW of solar power.

Mauli wrote: If it were not two loyal family poodles (ABV and Brajesh Mishra(son of DP Mishra)) there was no chance in hell that Congress would have returned to the power. And absolute control which dynasty enjoined during pre- mandal days is not going to return in next 1000 years. Very few know that Sonia backed-off from the PM post after she was advised by ABV.

Dear Dr Singh,
Greetings! This is my second open letter to you this year. The first was in May when I had raised the issue of political corruption. To quote from the May 28 letter: “There is little doubt sir of your personal integrity, but would you concede that its been difficult for you to check corruption amongst your ministerial colleagues? As a supplementary, may I ask that if the CBI had been investigating a Congress minister and not an ally like A Raja of the DMK, would you have shown the same leniency?”

Unfortunately, I did not receive a response to my query. Now I know why. It has become increasingly apparent as the 2G scam unfolds that the DMK was a law unto itself in your government. While you did write to the then telecom minister in November 2007, voicing your concerns over spectrum pricing and asking him to ensure a fair and transparent auction, the fact is Raja ignored your missive. Yet, instead of dismissing him from the Cabinet for challenging prime ministerial authority, he was ‘rewarded’ in May 2009 with the same portfolio, only because the Tamil Nadu chief minister staged a minor tantrum. Can there be any greater evidence of the clout which the DMK exercised within the UPA?

Had you acted against Raja three years ago, you might have been able to rise above the stench of corruption that now envelopes your government. More importantly, it has perhaps for the first time in your long and distinguished career in public life that the ‘Mr Clean’ image which you have so assiduously maintained has been stained.

Dr Singh, your life has been an inspiration for millions of Indians. The story of the rise of a young boy from Gah village, walking miles to his school, studying under the dim light of a kerosene lamp and working his way up through scholarship inspires hope in all our hearts. When you became PM, we rejoiced in the belief that at last we had found a leader we could identify with, someone who wasn’t a spoilt dynast, but a genuine representative of the great Indian middle-class dream.

Critical to this identification process was the knowledge that this was a PM who was personally incorruptible. It was a bit like being transported back to the 1970s Amol Palekar era of cinema, where the honest bank manager in a bush shirt touched a chord with audiences through his old-fashioned values of simplicity and decency. We warmed to stories of how you still owned a 20-year-old Maruti car, how your family members had been resolutely kept away from the trappings of power, how your lovely wife Gursharan Kaur still went shopping for vegetables at Khan Market.

I am sure that Gursharanji still keeps a tight rein on the household budget. But with due respect sir, being PM is not about family budgets, it’s about the national treasury that you have been empowered to preserve. A bank manager may well be of ‘impeccable’ personal integrity at home, but if he allows his clerks to loot the bank, then he clearly is failing in his primary responsibility at the workplace. Sadly, that’s exactly what seems to have happened in the UPA cabinet, and your continual hand-wringing is now becoming a sign of impotence.

At one level, there is obvious empathy with the situation you find yourself in. A coalition government is by its very nature a political arrangement based on compromise. Part of the compromise appears to be a readiness to allow every constituent to set its own rules of engagement, including when it comes to cornering the ‘ATM’ cash-rich portfolios. The NDA which is planning a national campaign on corruption would be well-advised to examine its own track record in this regard.

Frankly though, one is weary of reducing corruption to a zero-sum UPA versus NDA political battle. The average Indian citizen is not interested in knowing who is more corrupt, the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra or the BJP government in Karnataka. The left may have a better track record, but let’s not forget that its prime ally in Tamil Nadu is Jayalalithaa who still has serious corruption cases against her. Taking a moral high ground may work in a television studio debate, it’s unlikely to attract cynical voters.

What the aam admi seeks (and presumably the UPA still claims to be an ‘aam admi government) is a readiness to act against the corrupt and make examples of them. Your leader, Sonia Gandhi, claimed to her parliamentary party that the Congress has ‘acted’ against corruption. Can the notion of ‘action’ be defined please? Forcing a minister to resign is not action, prosecuting him would be. Handing over a case to the CBI is not action, ensuring that the investigation is taken to its logical conclusion would be. The nation is not a set of gullible MPs who will be taken in by rhetorical flourishes. We don’t need to become a lynch mob, but the fact is an alert and enraged Indian citizenry will no longer settle for fine words alone.

Here’s a concrete suggestion: why don’t you amend the Prevention of Corruption Act to ensure that all corruption cases involving public servants, be they officials or politicians, are put on fast-track? If they are proved innocent, restore their dignity. If they are guilty, have them jailed and their properties confiscated. You may lack political support for your move, but trust me, an entire nation will cheer you on.

Post-script: May I also suggest a brief year-end family holiday to rejuvenate yourself in this make-or-break fight against corruption. The country needs a re-invented Manmohan Singh who is willing to crack the whip in 2011, not a passive observer of the muck around him. Happy New Year!

Rajdeep Sardesai is Editor-in-Chief, IBN 18 Network n [email protected] The views expressed by the author are personal

Price of Kani link: cloud of doubt
- Once a ‘medal’ to flaunt, CBI raids turn glare on anyone who has connections with poet-turned-politician
G.C. SHEKHAR


Chennai, Dec. 16: Even a casual connection with Kanimozhi used to be flaunted as a proud medal in Chennai’s social, cultural and political circles. Till the 2G scam reached its present crescendo, that is, and the CBI raids started.

Today, anyone seen close to the poet-turned-politician appears to have come under suspicion.

Father Jegath Gaspar Raj admitted as much while denying that scam funds have flowed into Tamil Mayiam, an NGO he runs and whose office was raided yesterday.

“True in the context (of the 2G scam) created by the media, things have come under a cloud,” he said today, asked if those associated with Karunanidhi’s literary heir had come under a scanner. “We are being unfairly targeted just because we work with political personalities.”

Gaspar Raj admitted that his association with Kanimozhi — one of the DMK’s power centres — for the street festival Chennai Sangamam helped in getting logistical support from the state government. What he did not say was that it opened doors for him in the corridors of power.

“We canvass for sponsors using professional agencies and not by dropping names,” he said, trying to fight the popular perception that the Kanimozhi name brings in the funds for his projects.

Proximity to the Rajya Sabha MP is also credited for S. Saravanan, a man from a modest background, swinging a multi-crore land deal involving a 53,000sqft property on Chennai’s arterial road.

Kanimozhi claimed that Saravanan, who doubled as her secretary and her mother’s business manager, had only acted as a mediator in the deal between 14 joint owners and a Malaysian businessman. But it is doubtful he could have cut in to the deal if it were not for his “CIT Colony connection” — a euphemism derived from the neighbourhood where Kanimozhi and her mother Rajathi live in a palatial bungalow.

“The local media had been full of stories that Saravanan took control of the property when a dispute amongst the original owners had come to Rajathi for mediation,” a DMK functionary said.

Rajathi issued a statement today saying Saravanan, who used to work in her company, had become a real estate agent and had finalised the deal in his personal capacity and that she had nothing to do with it.

Poongodhai Aladi Aruna, the Tamil Nadu IT minister, is another Kanimozhi groupie. She owes her comeback into the ministry to the blessings of the mother-daughter duo. Poongodahi was sacked three years ago for arguing the case of a corrupt relative with the state vigilance chief, which became public through a leaked phone tap.

Poongodahi again finds herself in hot water after her phone conversation with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia — she described Karunanidhi’s son M.K. Alalagiri as a “cut-throat politician” — got leaked.

Now Alagiri wants Poongodhai’s scalp but Karunanidhi has resisted, arguing that dropping her now would alienate the votes of the Nadar community from which she hails.

Nakkeeran’s Kamaraj has got hit by a double whammy —he is close to both A. Raja and Kanimozhi — not the best combination in these troubled times for the DMK. He, too, was raided by the CBI.

An unfazed Kanimozhi today made light of the CBI raids. “This (the raids) is a process to show we are clean and DMK is very open to it,” she said with a smile.

An apology for an error

On its 'India at 9' programme last night (December 16, 2010) CNN-IBN had posted viewer feedback in course of its debate on whether lobbying should be legalised. This viewer feedback was wrongly attributed to Twitter accounts. We deeply regret the error and apologise for the same.
We will take all steps to ensure that this is not repeated.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/an-apology-f ... ml?from=tn

The Enforcement Directorate has asked intelligence officers at Indian missions in several countries to check the money trail in the 2G scam. Missions which have got the communiqué include those in Cyprus, Cyprus, Mauritius, British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Isle of Man, Singapore, Dubai, Libya and Norway.

Documents with the ED indicate that Unitech, through its wholly owned subsidiaries and associates in various countries, made interlinked transactions to hide real beneficiaries.

The companies identified as recipients are Unitech Builders and Estates, Adonis Projects, Aska Properties, Hudson Properties, Nahan Properties, Unitech Infrastructure and Volga Properties.

Details asked from the mission are on the nature of business conducted by Unitech's subsidiaries, copies of their balance-sheets, and the names of their promoters and directors.

The officers have specifically been asked to check the antecedents of the money coming into Unitech Wireless under the ambit of Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

A spokesperson of Uninor, when contacted, said, “We are not aware of any notification from the ED.” The communiqué is a prelude to Letters Rogatory (formal government missives) for some of these countries, considered tax havens, if incriminating evidence turns up.

ramana wrote:Interestng that one branch of MK's family is being roasted while the thuggish side is not entangled in this mess.