Gandhi
Private Limited:
It was in the 1980s that Arun Shourie
wrote a series on the scams by then Maharashtra CM AR Antulay. It was
appropriately titled “Indira Gandhi as
commerce”. Cut to 21st Century and we now have a company that can truly
have the reputation of Gandhi Private Limited. The long and short of the National Herald (NH) scam is as follows:
Congress gives a loan of 90 crores to
owners of NH (Associated Journals Ltd) to pay off their debts worth that
amount. The funds of Congress are from donations that are tax free and cannot
be used for commercial funding as per law. The grateful NH then transfers
shares worth that amount to Young India,
a section-25 not-for-profit company, owned by the Gandhis and some others.
Young India pays 50 lakhs to NH and buys off the company. In the process Young
India and the Gandhi get realty worth 2000 crores. That is the Delhi property
alone. If one adds up other properties of NH across the country the assets are
reportedly around 5000 crores. So
Young India got assets worth over 2000 crores for a paltry 50 lakhs (and the
indirect transfer of 90 crores from Congress through NH in terms of shares).
Had these facts not come to light around
November 2012 many of the real estate assets of NH would have already changed
hands and sold to builders and property developers. It’s a lot like Robert Vadra buying land cheap with
funds from a future buyer, getting it quickly regularised and then selling it
off at a huge premium to that same buyer who funded him. Typically, when the
scam did come to light our media was very scared as always to ask questions to
the Gandhis and they still are. Instead they attacked Subramaniam Swamy who has been handling this case legally. The
worst offender was none other than Sonia’s bootlicker Rajdeep Sardesai who held a sham debate (Read here) and asked the following question:
On June 26, 2014 a court in Delhi, after
the first hearings, has found a prima-facie case of Criminal breach of trust
and conspiracy to cheat and has summoned Sonia
Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi an another
four Congress members who are involved in executing the NH scam. The law will
take its course, as they say but it’s what the spokies and other doormats of
Congress responded with that is atrociously interesting. There was Kumar Ketkar and Congress spokie Randeep Surjewala. First on CNN-IBN and
then on TimesNow. The most garbage naturally came from the moron called Kumar
Ketkar (KK).
First KK claimed that he had not read
the court order so he doesn’t know the facts. If you don’t even read the order
and don’t know the facts why do you go on a TV panel? Then this moron carried
on in TimesNow stating that takeover of NH is just another bigger organisation
gobbling up a media house and all such takeovers should be debated. This is the
childish nonsense that KK brings to the table. How this guy became an editor is
a mystery. Mahesh Jethmalani had to explain to KK that it wasn’t a hostile
takeover of a media house because the organisation had no plans to carry on any
media business. The Congress party is also not a commercial organisation that
should be in the business of takeovers. Obviously, stupid KK is hinting at the
recent takeover of Network18 by Reliance. Is there any comparison between the two?
Does Reliance need to takeover N18 to acquire some stupid assets of N18? This
is as silly as our alleged editors in the media are. That moronery done, KK
even made an alarming statement. Since he had not read the court order he
screamed “how can we trust court orders”.
Who should we trust then? Mahatma Sonia?
Then there was the “demented” Randeep Surjewala of Congress who went on a non-stop rant
on Timesnow without allowing anyone else to talk or sticking to the case.
Sujrewala claimed Swamy is nobody to interfere in the “private” matters of the Congress. Laughable! A political party scamming a commercial organisation fraudulently is
the “private” matter of the Congress? Worse, he went on to add that NH was founded by
MK Gandhi and Nehru to further the ideals of “Secularism” among other things. Where the hell did secularism come
into this scam? And I seriously doubt MKGandhi and Nehru were discussing
secularism at all. And the third thing is the Congress cry of “vendetta” by BJP through Swamy. This
case started during the Congress govt and naturally they wouldn’t want to act
on it. Even so, why should the prosecution of an act of corruption and fraud be
seen as vendetta? Not one media channel even demanded that Sonia or Rahul
appear on their show and answer questions. But these same cowards have no
problems hounding others, shoving mics into faces, way-laying people at their
homes and vehicles like ordinary thugs. That’s our MSM for you. If this case
had come up for hearing before the elections Congress would have got lesser
than 44 seats.
The Congress and their members can
scream all they want but they do know this is serious trouble for Sonia, Rahul
and the other sidekicks involved in these transactions. Other corruption
allegations involve ministers and alliance partners which enabled the Gandhis
to present themselves as clean. Not so in this case. Besides, every aspect of this case is based on hard
documents and not circumstantial evidence. Each transaction in the NH scam
appears fraudulent and with an intent to scam. Young India was formed as a “not
for profit” company but it hardly seems to be that. Appropriating assets worth
5000 crores of a company with no intention of carrying out its stated business
and renting out the property is hardly a “not for profit” mission.
Feeding
the NGO mafia:
We were just about getting a hang of
some anti-national NGOs and we are surprised with yet another scam-like act of
the previous Congress govt. It seems the Congress had realised they were going
to lose power and were bent on leaving as much muck behind for the new govt as
possible. Here’s a GOI press release
from September 2013:
“The Union
Cabinet today approved the proposal for setting up of the Bharat Rural
Livelihood Foundation (BRLF) as an independent charitable society under the
Societies Registration Act, 1860 to facilitate and upscale civil society action
in partnership with Government for transforming livelihoods and lives of rural
households, with an emphasis on women, particularly in the Central Indian
Tribal Region. It will provide financial grants to Civil Society Organizations
(CSOs) to meet their human resource and institutional costs for upscaling of
proven interventions; invest in institutional strengthening of smaller CSOs and
capacity building of professional resources working at the grassroots... Even
though BRLF will have an India wide mandate, the initial focus of the
organization will be on the Central Indian Tribal Region, centered on blocks
having significant tribal population across 170 districts in the States of
Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Rs 500 crore will be released for creating
the corpus fund of the new Society, in two tranches. The society will be
constituted as a partnership between Government on the one hand and private
sector philanthropies, private and public sector undertakings (under Corporate
Social Responsibility) on the other hand”.
What the hell is anyone to do if the
govt itself goes around forming NGOs? Have they concluded all the State govts
and Panchayats are useless bodies? Sonia Gandhi’s love for NGOs and activists
seems unending. Most of the members of this Bharat Rural Livelihood Foundation (BRLF) are from her pet coterie
called the NAC which is now dead. There’s some good advance planning it seems. To
put it bluntly, the BRLF is nothing but a “broker”
between NGOs and the GOI. It will “funnel”
funds to NGOs of its choice (or Sonia’s choice?) across the country (I couldn’t
find a website of theirs, if they have any). Who are these people accountable
to? And what is the brokerage and other perks that members of this BRLF will
enjoy? And under an MOU an amount of 500 crores has been pledged to this “Senior
NGO”. Indian Express reports
on it with additional information and about the founders of BRLF:
“Thanks to
Jairam Ramesh, the Modi government will have to shell out Rs 300 crore — over
the next two years — and deal with a society registered in the UPA regime
packed with “eminent persons” which include members of Sonia Gandhi’s National
Advisory Council. Barely two months before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections were
announced, the UPA’s Rural Development Ministry under Ramesh signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with Bharat Rural Livelihoods Foundation making it
a funding agency for NGOs across the country. And released to it a first
tranche of Rs 200 crore in January 2014… this society was registered in December that
year by members of the then National Advisory Council Mihir Shah, Virginius
Xaxa and Mirai Chatterjee among others. The other founding signatories include:
Nicholas Barla, a social activist associated with the Catholic Church in
Odisha; Bihar cadre IAS officer AS Mathew; S Parasuraman, Director of Tata
Institute of Social Sciences, and activist Pramathesh Ambastha… The BRLF’s
Memorandum of Association allows it to “raise financial resources” even from
“international agencies/organizations” apart from other sources like Central or
state governments and private sources with the purpose to “provide financial
grants to civil society organisations”.
200 crores already paid with great
urgency and 300 crores to be paid over the next 2 years. Sounds like the govt
created a Greenpeace for itself. It is worse than that if you consider that all
the salaries and other expenses of this body will be borne out of public funds.
There is only one way to see it. This BRLF is an immoral baby of an outgoing
govt with no purpose but to favour the “pet” NGO operators of the Congress and
Sonia Gandhi. This immoral act was carried out by none other than Jairam Ramesh who had interesting
things to say about NGOs himself:
You can read the whole story about
Jairam Ramesh calling many NGOs a “mafia” here.
And here is what he exactly said in according to IE’s report of September 25, 2013:
“Our experience
with NGOs in some states has not been good. In different states, we have seen
that NGOs have become a racket. And this racket has been formed because
politicians and NGOs have developed a close association," Ramesh said,
adding that most NGOs are either in the name of one or the other politician's
wife, son, daughter or some relative. "It has become a mafia," he
said, adding that "there are some states like Maharashtra, Gujarat...
where some NGOs are doing good work". Ramesh said that it was the strategy
of the government to give less importance to NGOs than they used to get
earlier. Elaborating further, he said that it was important to work with
elected institutions like state governments and gram panchayats. He added that
NGOs would be working in those places where the number of these (elected)
institutions was less”.
Jairam Ramesh says the above after
having formed the BRFL just a few days prior in the same month of September
2013. So it does appear that the BRFL was not created by Ramesh’s conviction
but more out compulsion from other “clever” political superiors. If you look at
the areas that BRLF has chosen to concentrate on, all of them have state govts
and panchayats. So this farce was played out for the pleasure of someone it
seems. There is only one way to reverse this. A govt cannot back out of an MOU
but it must wind up the NGO (BRLF) itself or its partnership with it. Govt cannot become an NGO. The 200
crores already thrown away should best be accounted for properly and no further
amounts should be paid to this “Broker NGO”. Whether it takes an ordinance or
any other act there is no way the GOI should fund such NGOs of “fancy” of
certain individuals.
Going by both, the National Herald scam
and the formation of this NGO broker BRLF, there cannot be any doubt that the
Congress party itself is a party of NGO for profits. The cases must be dealt
with severely to set precedents so that other govts or parties do not indulge in
such corrupt acts. There are many politicians in the ruling BJP also who are
connected or involved with some spurious NGOs. They should declare it, withdraw
from it or be investigated along with other fraudulent NGOs.