Fund collections scandal: Maharashtra CM Abdul Rehman Antulay meets his Waterloo

His detractors both in and outside the party often likened him - sarcastically - to Napoleon, for his height as well as his brashness. His admirers believed that their hero was quite as invincible if not as talented. But the mushrooming scandal last fortnight involving the highly questionable fund collections of Abdul Rehman Antulay, 52, the swashbuckling chief minister of Maharashtra, proved that the man had met his Waterloo.Antulay was in the hot seat not because he traded in trust, but because he arrogantly declined to cover his tracks. Under an illusion that he was dealing in white money - taken in cheques - instead of the more common hue of political funds, black, he proclaimed his deeds from the rooftops. In so doing, however, he raised the art of collecting funds to new levels of efficiency and expertise. Never before was so much money collected in such a brief time. Never before was a state administration so calculatedly bent to serve that single aim.Antulay acted, as others of his ilk, in the name of the poor, but seldom was the deception so blatantly exercised on so large a scale. And, sadly, hardly ever had the ruling party in the past closed ranks with such alacrity to resist the opposition's righteous onslaught. Even as the skeletons came tumbling out of the cupboard as the days went by, the Congress(I) chose to stonewall the Opposition, to cast a Nelson's eye on the mounting evidence and close ranks rather than lance the festering boil in one swift move.Antulay's defenders in the hallowed portals of Parliament last fortnight included Finance Minister Ramaswamy Venkataraman and the entire upper echelon of the Congress(I) not to mention the Congress(I)'s legions in Parliament and the Maharashtra Assembly.Basic Weaknesses: The scandal remorselessly brought out some of the basic weaknesses of the system, with the entire executive of the state obliged to work overtime to save the dubious honour of Antulay, and democracy's highest manifestation, Parliament, reduced to bands of rival quibblers with the ruling party stubbornly seeking to launder the murky deeds of a political notable as the Opposition, just as ferociously, sought to get at him.It was, without doubt, the biggest political scandal since Mrs Gandhi's return to power in January 1980. In physical dimensions it dwarfed the souvenir scandal of 1977 when the Congress party amassed Rs 6 crore for a souvenir that never saw the light of day. It was also qualitatively different from the comparatively minor scandals of the Nehru era, when two union ministers, T.T. Krishnamachari and K.D. Malaviya got the boot. Mrs Gandhi with Antulay: Embarrassing his patronBut times change - and so do conceptions of political morality. This was illustrated with dizzying clarity when both houses of Parliament threw out privilege motions against Venkataraman and Arun Shourie, the executive editor of theIndian Express.Shourie, whose expose of the Antulay case first set the ball rolling, had defiantly described the utterances of the pedantic finance minister on the floor of the house as "petty lies" - a culpable statement if ever there was one. But Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Hidayatullah and Lok Sabha Speaker Balram Jakhar chose to ignore Shourie's contemptuous challenge even as they absolved Venkataraman of the charge of lying.In doing so, they saved the Government from further embarrassment. But said Jyotirmoy Bosu veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) MP: "I don't know by what logic both the complainant and the accused can be found right."Sinister Shadow: The exorcism saga, however, was still far from over. Like an evil spirit that refused to be chased away easily, the Antulay affair was casting its long, sinister shadow on the exorcist herself.In the ding-dong parliamentary war that raged through the first half of the month, a newly galvanised Opposition tried to relate the entire Antulay controversy to what it thought to be its crux: that Mrs Gandhi had willingly allowed her name to be misused by the chief minister for the improper collection of a Rs 5.2 crore fund.The refrain ran through the initial nine hour debate on the subject on September 2, and echoed clearly in the rising crescendo of motions and notices sought to be tabled in the two houses of Parliament.For once, the tables were turned in the Lok Sabha where instead of the Opposition trying stalling tactics, it was the youthful khadi brigade of the Congress(I) which sought to prevent the Opposition from getting specific admissions from the Government. Though the finance minister, who is credited with nerves of steel, would not buckle, the prevailing impression was that the Opposition had achieved the rare feat of worsting the Government.The Antulay scandal centred on the setting up of a series of seven trusts by him between October last year and March this year. The trusts, controlling a corpus of about Rs 30 crore, were ostensibly public but, in reality, represented the private coffer of Antulay.Shourie: UnrelentingThe most controversial of the seven trusts, Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan (IGPP) - its name was changed to Pratibha Pratishthan - which was the first to be set up, had collected Rs 5.2 crore; Konkan Unnati Mitra Mandal - Rs 12.06 crore; Raigad Pratishthan - Rs 1.79 crore; Sriwardhan Trust - Rs 2.3 crore; Ambet Trust - Rs 6.94 crore; and Mhasla Pratishthan - Rs 94 lakh.The interesting aspect of the trusts is their naming. Konkan is the area Antulay comes from, Raigad is his district, Mhasla is his tehsil, Ambet is his village and Sreewardhan is his Assembly constituency. The last of the trusts, named after Nirmal Sethia, a London-based businessman and Antulay's friend, was, even as the chief minister himself blushingly admitted, "too private".Skilfully Drafted: The trust deeds were so skilfully drafted that the money, like Antulay's shadow, would have accompanied him even when he rode out of his large, oval office at Bombay's Mantralaya.As Shalinitai Patil, the Maharashtra revenue minister who was fired by Antulay for making unsavoury remarks about him, aptly summed up: "The trust is not controlled by Chief Minister Antulay; it is controlled by barrister Antulay."The main charge against Antulay was that after having passed off the trusts, particularly the Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan, as entirely official, he had brought pressure to bear on the state's vast cooperative sugar industry to collect from farmers a levy of Rs 2.50 per tonne of sugar cane as donation. Not that such levies are uncommon in Maharashtra, but the element of coercion involved in the "Antulay levy", promptly described by Shalinitai as a "jizia tax", soon became a sore point.When Indian Express published the story, complete with a list of donors to the Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan, there was already a simmering discontent among farmers about the new levy. However, the knowledge, that it was indeed a private trust soon brought forth howls of execration against Antulay, both in political circles and among the general public.So secure seemed Antulay's place in the rogues' gallery of Maharashtra last fortnight that his two college-going daughters could not attend their classes for fear of being harassed. In the state Assembly, 'chor' was only one of the mildest epithets used against him.Earlier Crisis: Antulay had tasted crisis even before in his political career. As a minister in the V.P. Naik Cabinet, he was embroiled in a nasty controversy a decade ago when his official car was detained with contraband at Wadhkal Naka, an interstate checkpost. Later on, a five-man Assembly committee carried out a long, tortuous exercise to clear him of the charges.But this one was a flap of a unique kind. It reduced Antulay's abrasive, swaggering personality into a bundle of nerves. In a fortnight's time, he flew for 28 hours between Bombay and New Delhi, shuttling over 24,000 km. At times, he wove into the capital at 3.30 in the morning, and wove out, as though on a magic carpet, before the sun rose. There were crow's feet under his eyes.Venkataraman: StonewallingAt a press conference in Delhi, which was obviously something of an ordeal, he excused himself within minutes, mumbling something about his "pressing engagements" and leaving the waiting newsmen to their unfinishedsamosasand unanswered queries.However, Antulay's capacity for spinning yarns of facts and figures is limitless. Only a year ago, when he decided to go to Mecca on haj pilgrimage, he papered it over (lest it offended Maratha sentiments) with the hilarious piece of misinformation that he was indeed proceeding to London to recover the Bhawani sword that had belonged to Shivaji. True, he went to London. But, there, instead of looking for the sword in the British Museum, he found a scalpel for his piles.For the first few days of the trust controversy, Antulay dug in his heels and invented a series of red herrings to hide his trail. For example, the words "Indira Gandhi" were scratched out of the signboard at the office of the trust which read "Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan".Ten thousand copies of Anturichey Bol, the "red book" of Antulay's "thoughts" brought out by his Rs 4.5-crore-a-year publicity machinery, were reportedly destroyed almost overnight because it contained embarrassing clues to the formation of the trusts.A telex message was sent to the Delhi office of the Maharashtra Information Department, asking it withdraw from circulation all copies of the October 16, 1980, issue of Lokrajya, the official publication which carried the tell-tale photograph of Mrs Gandhi signing a document blessing the trust.Own Admissions: Ironically, it is Antulay himself who, by his characteristic braggadocio, first set the controversy regarding the trusts raging through the political circuits of New Delhi, a bare three days before Shourie had come out with his expose. Addressing a close-door meeting of 40-odd MPs from Maharashtra at Maharashtra Sadan, the lavishly decorated state guest house on the capital's tree-lined Copernicus Marg, Antulay gave out details of the seven trusts, expatiated on his grandiose scheme to "help the poor", and sought the legislators' help in "attracting more generous donations" to his funds.Though the deliberations of the meeting were not meant to go out of the room, a high-powered MP belonging to the anti-Antulay faction, who is also closely associated with the sugar lobby of the state, promptly leaked it to a daily which front-paged the story in the next morning's issue. It was followed by a mild flutter in Parliament the same day.Hidayatullah: ControversialHowever, these tentative jabs could hardly disturb the proverbial calm of Antulay, who takes in his stride almost every day the slings and arrows of an outrageous Marathi press. But the Shourie story, running into some 7,500 words of cold forensic examination of the trusts' myriad loopholes, fell like a ton of bricks."This is the beginning as well as the end of the Antulay saga": said a Congress(I) MP from Maharashtra between whom and Antulay there is no love lost. However, little did he realise that, with the entirely lopsided moral values which his party represents, a corrupt chief minister, like the legendary cat, has nine lives.Meanwhile, Opposition camps in New Delhi swung into action. The demarcation lines between them had well-nigh vanished, with their combined operational camps set up in two MPs' bungalows: the sprawling red-tiled residence of the Congress(S) Rajya Sabha member, A.G. Kulkarni, on Shahjahan Road, and the double-storeyed house of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) veteran, Lal Krishna Advani, on Pandara Road.Even at Parliament House, there were unprecedented scenes of bonhomie among the Opposition MPs. Their Parliament offices turned into a vast clearing house for photo copies of documents, letters, circulars and photographs - all pertaining to l'affaire Antulay. An Opposition MP confessed to spending Rs 2,500 in a matter of two days to have various papers photocopied.In both houses of Parliament, the Opposition strategy was, first, to bring in special mentions on the Antulay affair and then to press for full-scale discussion. After two days' effort, however, Hidayatullah finally relented and allowed a full discussion, though care was taken to delete Antulay's name from the motion.An interesting feature of the front presented by the Congress(I) against the Opposition onslaught in Parliament was the involvement of the so-called Sanjay brigade. The loudest voices in Lok Sabha were those of Vilas Muttemwar, Jagdish Tytler and Rajesh Pilot - all known to have been very close to Sanjay Gandhi.It was hardly surprising though, because Antulay was among the many rootless wonders that the late Sanjay Gandhi had foisted on the various states as chief ministers. The formation of the trusts was his last desperate bid to raise himself on a pedestal, to taste such political power as could stem only from an overflowing coffer.Says Prabhakar Kunte, a dissident Congressman who has been at loggerheads with Antulay ever since he came to power: "A.R. Antulay has created this trust merely by paying Rs 501 (himself) to it. Once he collects Rs 125 crore, which he can, he will have the power to disburse annually more than Rs 12 crore. Can you imagine the power of a politician who can spend a crore a month on his constituency?"However, the idea of "leadership through trusteeship" occurred to him as early as August last year. The declared objectives of his trusts were not dissimilar from the other 452 trusts registered in Maharashtra - rural development, encouraging talent in art, culture, and what have you. The objectives of the IGPP, among other things, even mentions the welfare of nautanki and tamasha artistes.Jakhar: DefensiveAntulay claimed that the basic idea behind the trusts was to "find a way out of the bureaucratic tangle". But, in reality, the board of trustees were packed with Antulay's friends and relatives, people devoid of any background of public service. Antulay's wife, Nargis, for instance, is a member of five of the seven trusts. His father-in-law, Sikander Faki, is a trustee of the Konkan Unnati Mitra Mandal.Who's Who: In fact, the whole list of trustees reads like a who's who of Antulay's personal old-boy circuit. P.J. Mehta, a chemical engineer who studied with Antulay in school, is on as many as three trusts. Regarding Mehta's credentials, Antulay says with touching simplicity: "He is a dear friend of mine." Amen. S.P. Kanuga, whose name figures in the trustees' list of four trusts, is a close political ally of Antulay who had earlier been rewarded with a berth in the Government panel of advocates. Similarly, A.S. Bhise, an industrialist friend lends his august presence to the board of three trusts.The man of mystery, Ajit Kerkar, who is on two boards, is the Tata executive in charge of the group's hotel division, the Indian Hotels Company Limited. At its last annual general meeting, the company voted for a substantial jump in contributions to charitable trusts. For 1981-82, Kerkar and his co-directors last month obtained the shareholders' consent to contribute a mind-boggling Rs 60 lakh compared with last year's Rs 25 lakh.Kerkar, who grossed Rs 1.79 lakh in salary from his company in 1980-81 was not bubbling with altruistic zeal for nothing. Antulay had appointed him the chairman of an official slum clearance committee which, significantly, did not include a single expert on city planning, environment or social welfare.Cabinet Resolution: Antulay's closely held, all-in-the-family trusts got under way about one year ago with the Indira Gandhi Pratiba Pratishthan. The Maharashtra cabinet met on October 6, 1980, to set up the Rs 5 crore trust for the welfare of poor artists, singers, writers and performers.The Cabinet passed a resolution to give the still unregistered trust, which it clearly described as Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan (and not just as Pratibha Pratishthan as later claimed by Antulay), a flying start with an official donation of Rs 2 crore.The trust hit the headlines six days later when Mrs Gandhi associated herself with it. On October 11, 1980, Mrs Gandhi signed a statement saying, "I am happy to associate myself with the Pratibha Pratishthan, Maharashtra."Photos and reports of this event were next day splashed all over the Bombay papers, but with one crucial difference: the news reports, without exception, described the trust not as the Pratibha Pratishthan but as the Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan.Antulay's publicity machinery also moved into top gear. Lokrajya led its issue of October 16, 1980 with a news item saying, "The Prime Minister, Smt Indira Gandhi affixed her signature on the document giving her consent to name the Maharashtra Government's trust for promoting talents in literature and the arts as 'Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan' at Raj Bhawan in Bombay on October 11."False Impression: For good measure, the formal announcement of the trust was made to coincide with other welfare schemes launched by the Government.Telegram sent by Sakar Sangh, the apex body of Sugar Cooperative in Maharashtra, to its constituent members on July 2, 1981, seeking contribution to IGPP: MisrepresentationThe Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojna and the Sanjay Gandhi Swabalamban Yojna were announced at the same time as the Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan, thus giving the impression that it was also a government-sponsored programme.The Pratishthan's trust deed was written up a week later, on October 18, 1980, and specified: "The trust hereby created shall be designed or known as "Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan...." yet, there was one very vital difference between what had been announced and what was actually set up. True, the trustees included, besides Antulay, prominent public officials such as Finance Minister Ramrao Adik and Justice Rajaram Bhole of the High Court. But they, and other officials, like Maharashtra Chief Secretary P.G. Gavai, were present as private individuals and not as public officials.The trust deed specifies Antulay and the other trustees by name and not by their official positions as would be the practice if the trust were, indeed, set up by the Government.To some this was of little consequence. Said Adik: "It makes no difference whether he is there in his personal capacity or as chief minister."But lawyers point out that in such other bodies as the Nehru Centre in Bombay and the Prime Minister's Relief Fund in Delhi - both of which are entitled to the benefits of charitable trusts the top positions are held "ex-officio" by the chief minister and the prime minister respectively regardless of who happens to occupy that position."If this were a trust set up by the Maharashtra Government," argued a lawyer, "Antulay's name should not have been there, he should have been described as the chief minister of Maharashtra."Genesis: On October 18, the Maharashtra Assembly voted for giving Rs 10 lakh as grants to the trust and on October 24, 1980 a cheque for Rs 10 lakh was issued in favour of IGPP although the trust was not formally registered till that time. Says Madhu Deoleker, the suave general secretary of the Bombay BJP "Everybody was under the impression that it was a government project."Unknown to the rest of the world, then, the "Maharashtra Government's trust" started life, officially registered on November 18 as a trust put together by live individuals acting in their private capacity. This didn't prevent Antulay from maintaining the lie; in a publicity booklet entitled 'Maharashtra Marches Ahead", 15,000 copies of which were printed in December 1980, Antulay wrote: "To give recognition to and encourage the talented people in the fields of literature and fine arts, the Government of Maharashtra has set up a foundation called "Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan (Maharashtra)."Kerkar: More for charityTo give it the illusion of complete official status, prospective beneficiaries were asked to send their suggestions to "Shri Dinesh Desai, social and cultural secretary to the chief minister." In fact the trust used to operate from the chief minister's office till it was provided space in another government office at Nariman Point.Another document which leads to the conclusion that IGPP was intended to be a government project is the letter written by Sudharshan Arya, the executive secretary of the IGPP to the nominated trustees of the trust which says "chief minister and chairman of the Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan is pleased to appoint you as a member of the trust."If that wasn't enough, Antulay as chairman managed to concentrate such overriding authority in his hands as to become a virtual one-man trust. The trustees, the deed specifics, would be able to function "subject to the control of the chairman of the board of trustees".Under the duties of the chairman, the deed specifies. "The chairman of the trust shall be the head of the Pratishthan and in that capacity he will direct, supervise and control all activities of the trust.""I've seen many trusts," said veteran lawyer and fund raiser Rajni Patel. "I've never seen a trust in which so much power is concentrated in the hands of one individual. It is extraordinary that it was sponsored by the Government and the Government has no control over it. If Antulay ceases to be chief minister, what control will the Government have over the Rs 2 crore it has contributed?" Congress(I) Rajya Sabha member Premlatai Chavan was more explicit: "These trust deeds concentrate the entire power in the hands of one man, and he can use this power even after he ceases to be chief minister. Suppose he were to break with the party at some stage, he could even use these finances against the interests of the party and Mrs Gandhi."Questions: Clearly even officials were beginning to ask precisely this question as the tide of scandal swept up mounting evidence of wrongdoing.In a letter written last fortnight, the auditor general's (AG) office sought audit of government funds granted to the trust. In a letter to the director of Cultural Affairs, the office cited rules which said that orders sanctioning the funds "should contain a clause to the effect that if so required by the AG, Bombay, accounts together with with all the relevant papers of the institutions shall have to be produced for inspection by the AG, Bombay.When the scandal hit the Parliament, these deviations were drowned out by the controversy about whether or not Mrs Gandhi agreed to lend her name to the trust. Shourie's Indian Express stories established clearly that the trust was being bandied about as the "Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan" arguing that Mrs Gandhi agreed to this.But Venkataraman, on whom fell the unenviable task of keeping the ship of state afloat countered, that "she did not agree to her name being put in," and that he had "definite information that not only does she not generally approve of her name being associated with any of these things, but she did not want her name on the Pratishthan."Shalinitai Patil: Vehemently criticalVenkataraman was relying on an exchange of correspondence between Mrs Gandhi's office and Antulay. At the end of January 1981, the prime minister's special assistant R.K. Dhawan wrote to Antulay telling him to remove 'Indira Gandhi' from the name of the trust. Antulay didn't reply, and another letter was sent in April.But the maverick chief minister evaded the question, replying with a detailed statement of the objectives of the trust. When another letter in June failed to elicit a response. Dhawan sent an ultimatum on August 7 - which eventually resulted in persuading Antulay that the name had to be changed.But the entire episode left key questions unanswered:Why did Mrs Gandhi sign a declaration at all?If the Cabinet resolution decided to set up an "Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan", why did the document signed by Mrs Gandhi refer just to the "Pratibha Pratishthan, Maharashtra"?Why didn't the prime minister's office take notice of the change of name of the trust when Antulay's publicity blitz first came in?Why was Antulay dragging his feet to comply with the prime minister's order and omit "Indira Gandhi" from the name of the trust? Was he hoping that the cash register of die trust would keep ringing only as long as the magic name of Mrs Gandhi was attached to its name?Having set up the IGPP, Antulay's next logical step was to ensure the uninhibited flow of funds. Over a time, and with that end in view, the chief minister took direct control of such key functions as civil supplies, prohibition, the grant of 'No Objection Certificates' (NOC) to buildings, the allotment of industrial alcohol to breweries, giving permission to transfer flats in Bombay and, above all, the grant of cement quotas.It was hardly surprising that the chief minister's secretariat expanded like a gargantuan bureaucracy within a bureaucracy, its strength reaching 268 compared with 52 in 1979. Says former chief minister Sharadrao Pawar: "They've converted the entire Mantralaya into a market place." Adds Ram Nayak, president of the Bombay BJP: "The Antulay Government is for sale. You can buy anything if you have money in your pocket."Among the allegations against Antulay, the more serious ones are:He traded the allotment of cement for contributions to his trusts;He changed the cement distribution system to make out-of-turn allotments;He froze the issuance of NOCs thus blocking construction and raising the price of commercial and residential space in overcrowded BombayHe misrepresented the IGPP to sugar cooperatives and obliged them to make donations.Of all the charges, the one that requires closest scrutiny relates to cement. Though only four builders made contributions to the IGPP, their donations were made within days of their being allotted cement quotas. The Maker group, for example, was allotted 1,000 tonnes of cement in the name of four companies at its head office address on June 24, 1980.The same group donated Rs 2 lakh to the IGPP on July 1, 1981. Similarly Hiranandani Enterprises were allotted 600 tonnes of cement under two names on July 1, 1981; they sent a cheque for Rs 1.2 lakh to IGPP on July 4. Spokesmen of both concerns declined to comment.Gavai: Lending an official auraThere's more to the cement tangle than donations. Panna Lal Silk Mills Pvt Ltd, who were allotted 250 tonnes of cement on July 2, have no office at Gundocha Chambers, N. Master Road, Bombay, when India Today visited the premises. And, while 1,43,000 people are registered throughout the state waiting for cement, one group, Nahar Builders, was given 1,250 tonnes of cement in one day - July 2, 1981.By contrast, official bodies like the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) had to abandon many of their projects because they couldn't get cement. Says Prem Sharma, the chairman of the Standing Committee of BMC: "Against our monthly demand of 60,000 tonnes, the state Government has not released even 11,000 tonnes of cement during the last three months." According to Sharma, work on four fly-overs, expansion of the water filtration plant, extension of the corporation-run Bhabha Hospital and Nayyar Bhawan and even the construction of the drainage lane were running behind schedule because cement was just not available.Sharma disclosed that the state Government had forced the BMC to buy cement in black because it is paying the transport charges of Rs nine per tonne for carrying clinkers from the mines to the Digvijay Cement Factory in Bombay. The BMC would suffer a loss of Rs 1.50 crore on this head only.Said K. M. Goenka a property developer: 'Although ours is a weaker section priority construction scheme on a par with cooperatives in the priority list, we have received only 2,500 tonnes in two years against our registered demand of 45,000 tonnes. The Government hasn't treated weaker section schemes as priority projects."If evidence of misrepresentation were required, it was available in respect of the collections made from sugar cooperatives. On May 27, 1981, the executive officer of the Directorate of Sugar addressed letters to sugar cooperatives in the state communicating a decision taken by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Ltd to allow the collection of donations from sugarcane producers for the IGPP. The resolution also laid down a graded scale of Rs 1.75 to Rs 2.50 per tonne for deduction from cane growers for IGPP.Anomalies: In fact, sugar cooperatives have traditionally deducted contributions from amounts payable to cane growers for various purposes. Such deductions are routinely made for the area development fund, the chief minister's relief funds, and amounts to no more than five or six rupees per tonne, or about two per cent of the current price.Strangely, the resolution passed spoke of education, water for rural areas and helping artisans as the objectives of IGPP. "This is a clear case of misrepresentation," said one cooperative functionary to whom the resolution was sent. He surmised that the rural aspects had been added in order to convince farmers that they might benefit from the trust.This was followed up by telegraphic messages to those sugar mills who hadn't complied. On July 2, for example, one telegram went out to a mill to say, "kindly send demand draft in favour of Sangh for Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan donation within three days. Matter most urgent and important."The significance of this lay in the fact that the second advance of dues payable to growers for the current season had been sanctioned by the Director of Sugar, and mills were being asked to make deductions before the dues were paid to sugarcane growers.Nargis Antulay: All in the familyMost sugar cooperatives found it expedient to obey such directions. "It's a form of insurance," said a Maharashtra politician. The cooperatives have their own trusts. Several cooperatives have been involved in questionable molasses and alchohol deals and aren't too keen on having the state authorities pry into their affairs.Antulay made no bones about using his authority. After setting up all his regional trusts on March 26, 1981 he declared: "To fulfil the expectations of the poor people from the chief minister and the state Government, we have to make use of our power and the state resources. But this cannot be done by giving speeches but we have to utilise this money for the poor people.Whosoever rich person comes to me, I show him the 12 trusts on my table and tell him that these trusts are exempted under the Income-tax Act and as such he has not to pay anything from his pocket. I have formed this hobby now and whosoever comes to me, I make a demand and I am sure that in the coming months, Rs 55 to Rs 66 crore will be collected by these various trusts."Antulay was not wrong in his assessment. In the next four months he collected almost Rs 30 crore for the six trusts handled by him. Though details are available only about the IGPP, he was surprisingly able to put together almost 90 per cent of the amount in six weeks in July and August. Sometimes, his zeal knew no bounds.Some donors told India Today they had handed over cheques with the payee's name left unfilled. Noted industrialist and philanthropist S.P. Godrej said he had been keen to give money to help rehabilitate slum residents shifted by Antulay. Having given the go-ahead for a donation to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund. Godrej says he was astonished to read in the Indian Express that his donation had found its way into the Konkan Unnati Mitra Mandal.Black Money: Bombay has always been a pot of gold for political parties. As the country's premier industrial and financial centre, with activities capable of generating according - to one estimate - Rs 100 crore in black money each month, it has been honey to the fund-collecting bees of political parties, without exception.There have been notorious phases in the past, such as the reclamation of land off Colaba, the opening of the new suburbs of northern Bombay, and the selective relaxation of stringent building regulations represented by the floor space index when tidal waves of political funds have inundated party - and personal - coffers.India's licence and shortage economy has always been easy prey to unscrupulous politicians who have made capital of the mass misery. Discretionary powers, to allot scarce cement of fertiliser, or grant licences to import or manufacture, have frequently come with a price.S.B. Chavan and Adik: Waiting in the wings?Antulay's method of collecting money, the alleged misuse of official machinery, have added a new dimension to an old business. Some of Antulay's supporters say that having collected by cheque he is, in fact, a cut above others who raked in the black stuff.Indeed, going just by the fact of trusts alone, Antulay is following a well-set tradition, set by such illustrious Maharashtra politicians as Vasantdada Patil, Shalinitai Patil, Sharad Pawar, Y.B. Chavan and Rajni Patel.According to official information, Vasantdada Patil and his wife have a total of three trusts, and the biggest of them, the Jeejabai Mata Trust, has collected more than Rs 12 crore in donations. Pawar, who is connected with some six or seven trusts, most of them connected with sugar cooperatives, was accused by Antulay of not having submitted their statements to the charity commissioner.Even with so much baggage on his shoulder, Antulay, like a trapeze artiste, can still manage to dangle in limbo. The secret of his charmed life is primarily the consideration in the Congress(I) high command that his ouster right now will amount to conceding defeat to the Opposition.It is no wonder, therefore, that Mrs Gandhi told newsmen in Madras last fortnight that the Congress(I) Parliamentary Board found "no time" to decide whether Antulay's resignation should be forwarded lo the Maharashtra Governor, O.P. Mehra.Two additional factors combined to keep Antulay poised on his precarious perch. One, there was nobody on call to replace him. Shalinitai, and her husband, Vasantrao Patil - an All India Congress(I) Committee general secretary and a former chief minister of the state had spoilt their own chances by joining in the Opposition attacks on Antulay.Of the ministers in Delhi, there were three choices: Vasant Sathe, the information and broadcasting minister, who is considered indispensable in the Union Cabinet; S.B. Chavan, the education minister, who had been a chief minister before but could not leave his mark there; and Shivraj Patil, the Union minister of state for defence, who was rated as too mild a person to effectively rule the State.However, sending a man from New Delhi would have entailed a fresh Assembly election which the party would prefer to avoid, considering the fact that the Antulay affair has pushed its popularity in Maharashtra to a new low.This was confirmed by a spot opinion poll due to be published in the next issue of Bombay, the city magazine which is a sister publication of India Today. As much as 60 per cent of the Bombayites who were interviewed said they believed the allegations made against the chief minister, 17 per cent said they did not, while the remaining 23 per cent could not make up their minds.Again, 61 per cent of those interviewed held that Antulay should not continue as chief minister, 18 per cent said he should, and 21 per cent were undecided. In a city of traditionally divided political opinions, this represented an unprecedented single-mindedness.Weary Antulay: Can he look critics in the eye?Normally, it goes against Mrs Gandhi's grain to act with a gun at her temple and to dump colleagues when the heat is turned on them. But the Antulay episode infuriated her for having been dragged into the controversial limelight; and with a powerful section of the party backed by Rajiv Gandhi advising speedy amputation, last fortnight came to a close with a whiff of imminent surgery.Opinion was veering round to an expedient imposition of President's rule in Maharashtra. This would for a time, at least, separate the politicians from the bureaucracy. It would save the Congress(I) from a by-election it doesn't want and give it breathing space to collect its wits about itself.That something had to be done was clear from the gathering momentum of the Opposition's attack. In addition to the parliamentary onslaught, Antulay's detractors, including noted jurist Ram Jethmalani, were begining to lodge criminal cases in court against him.Moral Dilemma: The moral of the Antulay story of course extends much beyond Bombay and engulfs the entire national fabric. As Kulkarni summed it up: "The attitude of this man (Antulay) crystallises the Congress(I) philosophy that if you're technically correct you're morally correct too."The jubilation in the Congress(I) camp over the Rajya Sabha chairman's verdict (in absolving Venkataraman of the privilege charge) is symptomatic of this philosophy.As Janata Party leader Madhu Dandavate further pointed out: "The borderline between technical victory and moral victory was first obliterated by Mrs Gandhi herself when she got her men to storm law courts, defy the judiciary and finally to reduce to mockery the piles of evidence against her produced by the Shah Commission. The Antulay story is a continuation of this moral dilemma".Malaise: Still, the Antulay saga is not an isolated chapter in the murky history of the association of moneypower and politics in independent India. As S. Mulgaokar, former editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, wrote last fortnight: "It is a little late in the day to talk of the Congress image being besmirched by the Antulays of this world. The Congress image in the public mind is precisely the one reflected by Mr Antulay."Over the years, maybe the scale and grip of the moneybag on Congress politics has expanded, but it is an abiding phenomenon all the same. Morarji Desai, the former prime minister, in his autobiography, complained that he felt embarrassed when Nehru almost hustled him into collecting party funds from Bombay. Last fortnight, while talking to India Today, he observed: "Corrupt people are ruling the country. Money collection is shameless these days. Have they collected only Rs five crores? These are not just political collections but collections done through corrupt means."In the three decades that separate the Desais and the Antulays, graft and corruption of the Antulay kind has only spread its tentacles, deeper engulfing the whole system. And Mrs Gandhi, for that matter, has very little to choose among her team of diminutive, sycophantic men who make no bones about cozening funds for the alleged benefit of the poor.It is but natural, therefore, that when the Antulay affair was raging in Parliament, rumblings about financial irregularities could be heard against as many as four Congress(I) chief ministers - J.B. Patnaik of Orissa, Arjun Singh of Madhya Pradesh, Jagannath Mishra of Bihar and Gundu Rao of Karnataka. "Who am I", read a cartoon bubble of Gundu Rao in a newspaper, "to cast the first stone in the trust drama?"Blessed with such a wonderful team of bunglers, Mrs Gandhi now cannot but guillotine Antulay and, maybe, a few more creatures of his ilk in other state capitals. In fact, during her brief visit to Bombay last fortnight, she refused to be seen off by Antulay at the airport.Sources in her secretariat also aver that it is Gundu Rao's turn now. During the past two months, he has repeatedly been refused meetings with her and is now faced with her chilly indifference.But will it help? Will a splash of perfume remove the stench emanating from a rotten political system where power has been conditioned to grow not out of the people but out of filthy lucre? The Antulay affair holds out many lessons, mainly for the ruling party, they will be lost if Mrs Gandhi does not embark in a cleansing of her party's augean stables.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 4, 2013 08:31 IST--- ENDS ---

Download App

Get 37% off on an annual Print +Digital subscription of India Today Magazine

Fund collections scandal: Maharashtra CM Abdul Rehman Antulay meets his Waterloo

PUBLICATIONS

TELEVISION

EVENTS

RADIO

GAMING

USEFUL LINKS

PRINTING

WELFARE

DISTRIBUTION

SYNDICATIONS

WEBSITES

EDUCATION