External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is a canny politician who is adept in the art of silence to wriggle out of many an awkward situation. Like grinning and bearing the ignominy of rushing to take on Sonia Gandhi at Bellary in 1999 and coming back with a bloody nose. Or of throwing her hat in the ring for the BJP prime ministerial sweepstake last year, until Narendra Modi became unstoppable. And after finding her place in South Block, she silently accepted Modi getting a free hand to craft India’s foreign policy. Never did she argue the toss.
But with the Lalit Modi episode, in which she was caught helping the diabolical genius of cricket to get out of his hidey-hole in the UK, on an excuse that may not stand a chance of winning before a court of law, Swaraj has indeed sailed close to the wind. Modi, implicated by the Enforcement Directorate in a fraud charge involving millions of dollars, is a fugitive from the Indian law.
Modi Under ED Scanner
There is a ‘blue alert’ issued against him by ED “for being suspected to have fraudulently acquired substantial foreign exchange outside India by misusing his position as Chairman, Indian Premier League”. Past attempts by ED to get at him for questioning have failed on technical grounds. It is a fact that after the BJP came to power a judicial verdict went in his favour concerning his passport. The matter is handled by Swaraj’s ministry which has not explained why the Delhi High Court decision clearing Modi’s passport was not appealed in the Supreme Court.
But it was even before that, in July last year, that Modi had sought Swaraj’s help to visit Portugal where his wife was undergoing a surgery, reportedly requiring his presence for signing on the consent letter. His legal status being that of a fugitive, having a valid passport or not, Swaraj, as the external affairs minister, was clearly making a mockery of both propriety and law when she wrote to British Labour MP Keith Vaz to help Modi.
And the request worked as Vaz promptly wrote to Sarah Rapson, director-general of UK visas and immigration, asking her to “make available” the IPL chief’s travel papers. Significantly, Swaraj did her powerful cross-continental lobbying on the quiet, in the gingerly fashion which is her trademark. If some e-mails hadn’t leaked now, all of it would have remained under the wrap.
A Humanitarian Aid Cover
Swaraj is now claiming that all she did was a humanitarian act. This plea is being endorsed by a huge band of BJP leaders, including party president Amit Shah. One wonders, though, if Swaraj would have put humanitarianism above the law if her husband Swaraj Kaushal did not serve 20 years as Lalit Modi’s lawyer, and her daughter, Bansuri, a barrister at law, had not worked for him for six years. And that is where the conflict of interest becomes glaring. It redlines the otherwise inexplicable tardiness of the MEA in approaching the apex court for the judgment on Modi’s passport going against it in the high court.
Lalit Modi is widely known as someone who lives precariously on the borderline between glamour and crime. Back in his student years in the US, he was convicted for involvement in a drug-related offence. The IPL under him became more a casino than cricket, being marked by a series of match-fixing scandals. ED alleges that he used IPL to raise cash from across the globe on a very large scale, a charge which he has resolutely denied. But when the cops want to question him, he plays the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Swaraj ought to have been particularly careful about not allowing such a disreputable client of her family members to cast his shadow on her offices. Yet she threw caution to the wind in helping Lalit Modi. And now it seems she has more friends in the party than were expected. Last year, when she hardly concealed her gripe for Narendra Modi upstaging her (and L K Advani) as the party’s choice of PM, she had very few supporters. But now she has all the party biggies on her side — from Shah to Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
In his defence of Swaraj, and his counter-attack on a very irate Congress, Shah has raised the question of the Bofors scamster Ottavio Quattrochhi being shown leniency by the Congress. But isn’t that one of the reasons why the Congress has got mired with just 44 seats in the Lok Sabha? For any government, including that of Narendra Modi, the first sniff of corruption may be ominous.
(The writer is Delhi-based veteran journalist.)
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