New Delhi : A PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a thorough investigation into the entire gamut of alleged corporate favours granted to ministers, bureaucrats and journalists in the garb of junkets and cruises. The immediate provocation for the PIL is the internal company communications of the Essar Group that allegedly show how it cultivated individuals in positions of power and influence, showered them with gifts and favours to push its business interests.
According to a report in the Indian Express, BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, his wife, two sons and daughter spent two nights on an Essar luxury yacht stationed in the waters of the French Riviera between July 7 and July 9, 2013. They were flown to the yacht in a helicopter from Nice airport. Reacting to the news report, the BJP sought to dismiss the disclosures with contempt. “This kind of news keeps coming every day. We don’t need to react to this,” BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told the media.
Responding to the disclosures, Gadkari, however, said: ”I was then neither an MP nor BJP president” and there was no conflict of interest. But an Essar executive, in an email to the yacht captain, had repeatedly made it very clear: “they are very important people… see they are comfortable.” The BJP is questioning whether there was an element of quid pro quo in the matter of Gadkari availing of the corporate hospitality, and which has been denied by the politician. Gadkari, too, has claimed that the Ruias, who own the Essar group, have personal relations with him.
According to Prashant Bhushan, who has filed the PIL, the corporate patronage is related to a murky situation where the industrial house is using its ‘contacts’ to leverage its position in BJP ruled states and push its interests in Parliament. Interestingly, there is bipartisan support for Gadkari in the unsavoury controversy with politicians across party lines contending that there is nothing wrong in a person availing of corporate hospitality if he happens to have personal relations with the family, and as long as no quid pro quo is not involved. The Essar group has, meanwhile, questioned the veracity of the emails which were the basis of the newspaper’s disclosures.
It is further alleged in the internal Essar communications that then coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal, Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Motilal Vora, then MP Yashbant Narayan Singh Laguri and BJP’s Varun Gandhi referred candidates for jobs in Essar. A senior company executive, in one of the emails, suggests that 200 slots be earmarked for VIP “referrals” and a separate data bank be maintained. Bhushan in his PIL wants the apex court to look into the entire matter of corporate largesse and order a court monitored probe.
INPUTS: IANS/Indian Express
