Author: Virendra Kapoor
Publication: Afternoon Despatch
& Courier
Date: August 31, 2001
Introduction: The Congress member
hopes that the controversy which landed him in trouble wold soon die down
Poor Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi! The
Congress Party member of the Lok Sabha from Raiganj in West Bengal was
sold a lemon allegedly by a fellow MP, albeit a member of the Rajya Sabha.
And Dasmunsi believing the said lemon to be a genuine article, triumphantly
brandished the same in the House. But instead of the government feeling
embarrassed by his great investigative feat, it was Dasmunsi who was scurrying
for cover, enlisting the support of fellow MPs to help him wriggle out
of the tight corner in which he found himself
The facts first. The Congress Party
chief whip in the Lok Sabha had produced a copy of what he insisted was
a letter written by the Union cabinet secretary, T. R. Prasad, to the principal
secretary of the prime minister, Brijesh Mishra. The contents of the letter
made out a strong case against disinvestment in Air India. Immediately,
responding to the Congress member's charges, the minister for disinvestment,
Arun Shourie, categorically stated that the letter was forged and referred
the matter to the CBI for a thorough inquiry. The CBI after examining the
letter buttressed the conclusion that the letter was indeed a forgery.
That should have been the end of
the matter. But Dasmunsi had staked his prestige on the authenticity of
the said letter. So much so he is said to have told the party leader, Sonia
Gandhi, to make it a point to be in the House when he unfurled the said
letter Sonia duly obliged but soon came to suspect that there was something
fishy about the letter Dasmunsi had produced with such flourish in the
House.
Dasmunsi, however, was not ready
to cut his losses and quit. Having been taken for a right royal ride by
an opposition colleague belonging to another party, he mulishly stuck to
the-letter-is-genuine line. But it wasn't. For several valid reasons. One,
it was not written on the letterhead of the cabinet secretary. Two, no
cabinet secretary would use the kind of language used in the forged letter
Three, Prasad himself had categorically stated that he had not written
such a letter nor were those his signatures on the letter produced by Dasmunsi.
Four, letters despatched from the cabinet secretary's office to the PMO
or to any other addressee are duly numbered and docketed. No such evidence
was available in the cabinet secretariat. And, finally, there was no evidence
whatsoever that it was received in the PMO which too follows the same procedure
of listing the letters received or dispatched.
The government was aware that it
had caught Dasmunsi on the wrong foot and wasn't willing to let him off
the hook easily Now, Dasmunsi got veteran MP Chandra Shekhar into the act
who objected to the CBI inquiry into the authenticity or otherwise of the
letter. Shekhar pleaded that such a course would prevent MPs from discharging
their functions since they are routinely given such letters and other material
by their constituents. Clearly, the idea was to extricate Dasmunsi from
his embarrassing predicament. Meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi ticked off Dasmunsi
for causing the party avoidable embarrassment.
Though he was yet to apologise or
concede that the letter he had produced was a forgery, Dasmunsi hopes that
the controversy which had landed him in trouble would soon die down after
the end of the current session of parliament. As to the real motive behind
the fake letter, there is near agreement in political \ bureaucratic circles
that it was the handiwork of the owner of a private domestic airline which
feared the privatisation of the national carrier, particularly its sale
to the Tata-Singapore Airlines joint venture. It is said to have routed
the fraudulent letter through its factotum in an opposition party which
is on the best of terms with the PMO.
