Bharat Rakshak

Hats off to all those folks who watch Manish Tiwari, Kapil Sibal, Rajdeep Sardesai and Burka Dutt. I reached a point (probably I am aging) that I just can't watch. I just take this opportunity to thank BRF folks who spend time to watch them and post analysis here.

suryag wrote:Guys how do you take Manish Tiwari, I cant stand him, he is so irritating

Hari Seldon wrote:Murli Manohar Joshi walks out, 2G report defeated by one vote: PAC on 2G. http://bit.ly/lR9jAq

Aditya_V wrote: Besides, now the SP and BSP are really different wings of the Congress.

The scandals are bursting on to the front pages fast and thick. Suresh Kalmadi, a Congress Party politician and the former head of the corruption-plagued Commonwealth Games, was arrested April 25. According to a report by the Indian Comptroller and Auditor General, the 2G spectrum scam alone, in which 2G licenses were sold off in a manner that was, to say the least, less than transparent, cost close to $40 billion in lost revenue.

All across India, people are saying enough is enough. And suddenly the unthinkable is starting to happen. People considered above reproach, or at least untouchable, are coming under the judicial cross-hairs. 2G alone has seen charges laid against one former government minister and several captains of industry.

And the latest high profile target is one of the biggest fish of all, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, currently #9 on Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People.

Sonia Gandhi is not just an individual, she is the steely core of a pillar of Indian politics. If she crumbles, it will shake the foundations of the venerable Congress Party, and possibly leave a gaping hole in the political scene. Meanwhile, a range of polarizing and regional parties are ready to rush in and stake their claim. Given the growing importance of India in our heavily globalized world, this is not just an Indian story, this is one all should be following very closely indeed.

Part of the genius of Sonia Gandhi is her ability to present herself as a helpless victim, convincing even her political rivals not to fear her as she is fatally flawed. In 1998, India was being led by BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee. When Nalapat spoke with him about Sonia, he was bluntly told to lay off, as, "so long as a white Christian lady is head of the Congress Party, I [Vajpayee] and my party will always be in power". Vajpayee and his party lost power to Sonia's Congress in 2004.

But the most serious threat to Sonia -- and, as she is at the apex of the Congress Party, and so to Congress itself -- is now lying on the desk of #18, the Prime Minister of India.

Notice to Congress spokesperson in Rs 300 crore scam

http://www.rediff.com/news/report/notic ... 110225.htm

suryag wrote:Guys how do you take Manish Tiwari, I cant stand him, he is so irritating

Hari Seldon wrote:Murli Manohar Joshi walks out, 2G report defeated by one vote: PAC on 2G. http://bit.ly/lR9jAq

Prof Soz is a Rajya Sabha MP and he cannot be the Chairman of PAC as this is a financial committee of Lok Sabha.

Speaker of Lok Sabha Meira Kumar is to reject Prof Saifuddin Soz election as PAC Chief

Aditya_V wrote:

Hari Seldon wrote:Murli Manohar Joshi walks out, 2G report defeated by one vote: PAC on 2G. http://bit.ly/lR9jAq

Defeated by 1 vote does not mean its not true, it just means the same as the cash for votes, as long as we win elections we can do what we like.

Besides, now the SP and BSP are really different wings of the Congress.

SSridhar wrote: Aditya, SP & BSP are transaction-based parties. They would side with the highest bidder. There are some colourful words to describe this profession.

CON Party's 2G Scam Cover up Strategy Outline:

1. Make noises on action against corruption. Provide a pretense of action. Arrest A Raja (Ex Minister), Siddharth Behruria, RK Chandolia (DoT officials). Disable, place road blocks on successful prosecution.
2. Talk of cancellation of licenses or at best provide a facade of action against one two entities. But do everything on ground to prevent fullscale cancellation, one step that will seriously penalize beneficiares of corrupted 2G spectrum allocation process.
3. Use CON party - friendly, corrupt media to disinform, misinform, obfuscate the central issue - 2G corruption. Use facetious but false arguments like, 'foreign investment that is necessary for India's growth will be hurt'. Fact: India's growth in the long term will be hurt if corrupt looters go unpunished. Corrupt media will at best parade looters - show some on camera, interview others, put up a pretense of scrutiny on the corrupt, but not ask basic questions and avoid covering the fundamental - penalizing the corrupt, as long as possible.

CON Party's 2G scam cover up efforts have suffered a setback with the PAC draft report.

Indian Parliament functions through various committees that enable checks and balances in the system. Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is led by Shri Murli Manohar Joshi, BJP, MP. As part of convention, PAC gets to be headed by opposition. PAC chases the money. It reviews, if the state wasted money, if it lost money etc.

PAC Draft report on 2G scam and its recommendations tabled by the commitee has resulted in serious acrimony because it puts the spot light on the 2G corruption.

Key Facts related to the PAC report follow:

• When the opposition wanted a JPC, CON party had argued that when PAC is present and headed by senior parliamentarian, MM Joshi, JPC is not wanted. The argument did not work as both PAC and JPC are different entities. They are not mutually exclusive as CON party tried spinning.
• CON party did try and prevent Prime Minister's Office people from being questionned by the PAC. This while Ratan Tata, Niira Radia etc, ended up getting questioned.
• PAC Report prepared by Dr. Joshi makes an unexceptionable recommendation. 2G licenses acquired wrongfully be cancelled. This is something corrupt CON party would not want.
• Draft questions the wrong doing of the then Finance Minister Chidambaram. While Chidambaram has a veneer of sophistication (starched dhoti, accented English, Harvard law education), his political base is weak. He depends on Sonia G, Karunanidhi/Jaya backing for his LS seat. And despite support from DMK, his win in Sivaganga against a strong Yadav candidate Kannappan was considered fishy. His son Karthi Chidambaram was reported in Wikileaks cable for deploying questionnable means in elections.
• BJP position is interesting. People identified with LK Advani - Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj have not really made serious demands on 2G license cancellation. It will be interesting to see how far is MM Joshi backed by the BJP.
• Indian People will be suckered on 2G scam if: (a) There is no successful prosecution and if (b) There is no license cancellation and penalization. As mentioned earlier, the thiefs that enabled and perpetrated 2G loot must pay a political and material cost apart from exemplary punishment through the wheels of justice. This is important if we want India to change for the better.

There are parallels in the mandates that Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress won in December 1984, and Sonia Gandhi’s UPA in May 2009. In both cases an aspirational electorate brought back an incumbent to power on a promise of optimistic change. A fortnight from the second anniversary of UPA 2 you can also begin to see parallels in the pace with which the Congress of 1984 squandered its mandate, and the UPA now.

UPA 2 began its decline even before it was two. For one, it had brought along its Bofors from UPA 1, the telecom scam. But to call the telecom scam primarily responsible for UPA 2’s predicament would be to oversimplify the case. Because in politics, a scandal or an event can spin so out of control as to destroy a strong, elected government and a popular, credible leader only if the political ground for that has been prepared by, what else, poor politics and leadership.

Nobody in the Congress or the UPA has been talking to this India, whether in cities or villages. This has been the quietest, the most shy government in India’s history, and nobody can govern this country from the trenches. If the mood at Jantar Mantar is anti-politician, or for an apolitical system, this has been an incredibly apolitical government, which is its own and India’s tragedy. Because in a democracy, politicians must speak with people, to sell their ideas, plans, explain their mistakes, promise redress, and so on. But here, Sonia and Rahul rarely, if ever, speak in public. They almost never speak to the media or make an intervention in Parliament and rarer still on behalf of the government. The party behaves as if this government has been outsourced to bureaucrats. The prime minister too speaks rarely and his minders seem to not only draw great comfort from it, but also take pride in it, as if they have a prime minister they need to protect, and hide from public interaction and gaze. If you do not speak to the voters for two full years, they will turn to somebody, to the courts, to high-decibel TV anchors, to Anna Hazare.

Petrified Congressmen are today coming out in self-serving defence of politics and democracy. But their own party set up this government as if politics was India’s curse and only what was apolitical was virtuous. How else would you explain the formation of the National Advisory Council (NAC) with a statutorily mandated position, and to which Sonia Gandhi related (in public perception) much more strongly than to her government? In the name of civil society, the NAC was not only given the powers to draft legislation but also to attack the government and its policies relentlessly. That is why the Congress now sounds so hollow when it questions the demand that “civil society” draft the new Lokpal legislation. If Sonia’s civil society can do it, why not Anna’s? And please stop giving us sanctimonious lectures on Parliament’s sovereignty over law-making.

anmol wrote:An interview of Vishvabandhu Gupta,provides an insight insight into Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and other movements against corruption. He is quite blunt in this interview and makes allegations against everyone in the movement(s), Subramaniam Swamy advises to pay attention only to the content of what he says.

Sanku wrote:Breaking news of CAG report on Air India/Indian airlines.

Massive scam

Requirement of 28 a/c upgraded unilaterally to 68
Planning commission inputs ignored
Forced to buy from Boeing instead of competition with Airbus.

Primarily the Mins doing.

With Jaideep Bose, TOI: Jul 7, 2009 20:44:12

“Whenever you do a bilateral, kickbacks are done on per seat $25. In this case Ramesh Nambiar and Talwar were involved. Patel is raking in 300-400 millions just in bilaterals.


“His (Patel’s) Boeing deals and kickbacks taken place in aircraft purchases. Over the last years Patel has made 15000-18000 crore in bilateral, aircraft buying, spares.

“Naresh and Vijay want to kill it (the airline) and Praful has made such a deal selling bilaterals. Airlines like Singapore Airlines who didn’t want to pay came and told me this.


“Air India has been forced to give up a lot of space to Indigo in Delhi in which Patel is also a silent partner.


“They removed Arora as he exposed them and sent a dossier to PM and Sonia Gandhi.


‘‘Sharad Pawar used his influence to remove him. They have raped the airline and killed it.”

“I am Pawar’s oldest friend, but also an enemy of his opportunistic politics. We have always wished well for Pawar. It’s high time he takes care of his health and distances himself from money-making politics. This will only make him lose whatever little credibility he has today,” Thackeray said in the editorial published in Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' on Saturday.

CPM leader Sitaram Yechuri commented that Kanimozhi's arrest in 2G scam will be dependent upon Tamilnadu election results. The chances of her arrest are slim if DMK wins the elections

Man who knows a lot
May 09, 2011 8:55:48 PM

Is that why the UPA is running scared?

With every new revelation, the Hasan Ali money-laundering case is becoming more and more of an embarrassment for the ruling UPA which had initially sought to brush the issue under the carpet. Remember how the Government had claimed ignorance of his whereabouts, but when the Supreme Court cracked the whip, the authorities suddenly located him. When Hasan Ali was at large, the Government was reluctant to treat the matter too seriously, maintaining that he was at best involved in tax evasion, albeit of a huge proportion. For such dubious cover-ups the Government received an earful from the apex court, which said that the case involved more than mere tax fraud. It was a subject of money-laundering as well, with all the attendant consequences. It was only after the authorities probing the issue realised the mood of the court that they became serious about their job. On one occasion, they admitted that the laundered money could have found its way to terrorist organisations or shady international arms dealers. The Enforcement Directorate, now so active that it has suspended an officer for shoddy investigation, has revealed that Ali handled black money for a number of clients. The fact that the Pune-based stud farm owner’s name is being linked to dubious people, including international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, should be cause enough for the Government to understand the gravity of the situation. But if it continues to prevaricate in court it is perhaps because the UPA, more so the Congress, is worried over the possibility of Ali spilling the beans. Already there are rumours that he has been patronised by senior Congress leaders. Seen against this backdrop, it is obvious what the fate of the Hasan Ali case would have been had the Supreme Court not stepped in and virtually taken over the investigations.

But it’s not just this one case that we should be concerned about. The larger issue of black money stashed in secret foreign bank accounts by various people and used for dangerous purposes, sometimes against the very country from where the money has emanated, should give us sleepless nights. One of the best ways to fight the menace is to track the illegal funds and seize them. True, this is easier said than done, since the money is parked in tax havens that have strong privacy laws which make it extremely difficult to secure information about such accounts. Even so, had there been adequate political will, the task would not have proved difficult. After all, it is not just powerful countries like the US which have succeeded in securing information from banking institutions about black money parked with them by their citizens, even smaller countries like the Philippines and Yemen have managed to get accounts containing illicit funds of their citizens frozen. That happened because these countries approached the banks in tax havens with evidence that the funds parked with them were proceeds from tax fraud or other criminal deeds. Tragically, unlike them, India has so far largely failed because it has merely forwarded the argument of tax evasion, which tax havens consider at best a minor misdemeanour. It’s scandalous that an estimated $462 billion in illicit assets have gone out of the country and the Government continues to twiddle its thumbs!

1997 - One day, a gentleman called up a courier office in Hyderabad (India) and introduced himself as HK Advani (brother of LK Advani). He was (supposed) to be representing the Swiss company De La Rue (before it was merged to become KBA Giori). He was checking with the status of a quotation from De La Rue for the Hyderabad Mint modernization.

http://2ndrelook.blogspot.com/2008/09/o ... -1959.html

ramana wrote:Post corrobroative reports like the head resigning, the Italina links etc.