The bets are against controversial Telecom Minister A Raja staying in the Union Cabinet until the May 2011 state Assembly elections. Many now believe the embattled Raja will be sacrificed for “coalition” dharma. From a prestige issue for the DMK, Raja has become a bargaining chip. It is reported that DMK Rajya Sabha MP MK Kanimozhi, daughter of party patriarch and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, met senior Congress leader and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on November 11 to give him the message that the DMK will give up Raja if the Congress commits to a pre-poll alliance for the 2011 state elections? We take a look at the controversies behind the man.
By Our Correspondent
I listened to my father. I went to school, combed my hair, avoided a few friends, wore a shirt, brushed my teeth, obeyed, got married. Now I am waiting. My chance will come.
Excerpt from Karuvarai Vasanai, a poem by DMK Rajya Sabha MP, Kanimozhi
More than poetry and politics appear to bind A Raja and his guardian angel, M Karunanidhi, the DMK patriarch. Perhaps it is a love for Periyar and writer Alexander McCall Smith that is still keeping Raja in his august ministerial office.
Born in 1963, Raja is the son of SK Andimuthu and Chinnapillai from the small town of Perambalur, about 400 km south of Chennai. Married to MA Parameswari, a lawyer like him, Raja has one daughter.
Perambalur is a pre-dominantly Dalit constituency and the well educated Raja (a science graduate from Musiri, law from the Trichy government law college and a master’s in law from Madurai) began his political career as a lawyer for the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in the late eighties. His political initiation was via Periyar’s Dravida Kazhagam platform, as activist in various social and literary fora like the Dr. Ambedkar Thinkers Forum, Rationalist Forum and the Tamil Ilakkiya Peravai. He soon drew the attention of party chief Karunanidhi and was installed in Parliament in 1996 as the ‘Dalit’ face of the DMK, often criticised for excluding the real Dalits from its social justice agenda. Reading books and writing poems in Tamil are among his hobbies and this has possibly struck a chord in poet-writer ‘Kalaignar’ Karunanidhi and his poet daughter ‘Kavignar’ Kanimozhi, who avidly pursues the adventures of The No 1. Ladies’ Detective Agency.
Elected to the 11th Lok Sabha in 1996 from the reserved constituency of Perambalur, Raja was re-elected to the 13th Lok Sabha in 1999 and was a part of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee cabinet till 2003. One of the youngest in the Cabinet, he was the Union Minister of State, Rural Development from October 1999 to September 2000. He then became the Union Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare and remained on the job till December 2003.
He returned to the Lok Sabha in 2004 and when TR Baalu moved to the ministry of Shipping and Highways, Raja was handed the Environment Ministry, which he mentored until mid 2007, keeping a low profile. Raja’s ministry quietly facilitated controversial projects across the country including the Sethusamudram Ship Canal and new coastal laws.
It has been alleged that Raja’s nephew, a Class-I officer in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, violated the service conduct rules by remaining on the board of a private firm without informing the Government. Sridhar had secured the government job, allegedly by providing false experience certificates. Applications for this post were invited during Raja’s tenure in the Ministry. The mandatory five-year experience certificate was allegedly falsely issued to Sridhar by his research guide Dr L. Kannan, who later was elevated as the Vice-Chancellor of Thiruvalluvar University.
From 1999 to 2004, Raja assiduously established his loyalty to Karunanidhi and in May 2007, when as a result of the internecine quarrels in the Karunanidhi family Dayanidhi Maran was ousted from the Cabinet, the Telecom ministry was handed over to Raja.
In the 2009 elections to the 15th Lok Sabha Perambalur was no longer a reserved constituency and the Congress was persuaded to give up the Nilgiris reserved constituency to accommodate Raja. He returned to parliament for the fourth time and continued to be in charge of Communications and IT.
By this time Raja was in the thick of the 2G-spectrum scam, partly because of which the formation of Manmohan Singh’s cabinet was delayed by several days. It was reported that the PM did not want Baalu or Raja in the Cabinet. Dayanidhi Maran had to be in the cabinet as he was the ‘symbol of reconciliation’ between the Marans and the Karunanidhi family, but he could not be returned to an important portfolio like telecom, without Azhagiri being offended. So the DMK agreed to drop Baalu in favour of Raja retaining the telecom ministry.
Karunanidhi’s wife, from the Nadar community, is said to have played a crucial role in deciding DMK nominees for the parliament elections. Raja is said to have the strong backing of Rajathiammal and her daughter, Kanimozhi. So much so, that during the cabinet formation crisis, Kanimozhi said, she “did not want to be a minister”, paving the way for Raja.
While Kanimozhi ensured Raja’s continuation in the telecom ministry she is also allegedly the cause of some of his troubles. It is alleged that both mother and daughter have many benami real estate businesses across Tamil Nadu because of which they got involved with some real estate companies like Unitech as well with builders like Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka. It was these real estate players who bid for and won the telecom licenses in 2008 that are at the core of the 2G-spectrum scam.
Balwa and Goenka acquired Swan Telecom which bid for and acquired 2G licences for 13 telecom circles for Rs. 1,537 crore. Soon after getting the licence Swan Telecom sold 45 percent of its equity to the UAE’s Etisalat for $900 million, earning a profit of a cool Rs. 2,600 crore. It is alleged that Raja’s wife was a lawyer for this company.
The other connection to Raja is that Swan, it was reported, planned an investment in 49 per cent equity in the real estate firm Green House Promoters Private Limited at a dictated price of Rs. 1,000 crore. Minister Raja’s wife Parameswari was a director in Green House Promoters until 2009. Parameswari first became a director in another company, Equaas Estates Private Limited, another real estate firm like Green House. The managing director of this company was Raja’s confidant, Sadhick Batcha, from the minister’s Perambalur constituency. Raja’s nephew RP Paramesh Kumar was a joint managing director. This company reported a huge ‘domestic’ turnover of Rs. 755 crore in the very first year of its operations in 2007-8.
Denying that he was in any way involved in Green House, the Minister said last year: “My wife, as an advocate, worked with them as the director (legal). She neither has any investment, nor attended any meetings.” However, he admitted his close relatives were in the firm. Batcha, the MD of Green House, also came out with a statement saying, Raja’s wife was not a director of the board. “With regard to her involvement, I would like to clarify that she was appointed the director (legal) to advise on legal issues. She neither has any shares nor any involvement in the day-to-day management of the company,” he stated.
Unitech too was involved in the 2G bid and had paid Rs. 1,651 crore for 23 circles. Unitech then sold a 60 per cent stake to Telenor of Norway for Rs. 6,120 crore, bagging a neat profit of Rs. 4,469 crores.
Media reports said last year: “The Telenor issue was highly ‘significant’ for Karunanidhi. During his meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi on December 4 last year, Karunanidhi had taken up the issue of clearance of Telenor files pending with the Home Ministry. On that day, Karunanidhi had led a multi-party delegation to Delhi to discuss the plight of Sri Lankan Tamils with the Centre. After meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the morning, Karunanidhi drove to 10 Janpath. None of the members of the multi-party delegation, who met the Prime Minister, was in the meeting with Gandhi. The then Union Minister, T.R. Baalu was (also) asked to go out after the photo session. Only his daughter Kanimozhi was present at the meeting with Sonia Gandhi.”
The third controversy is over BSNL’s WiMax franchise. The six companies shortlisted include five, said to have been floated by Raja’s confidant Sanjay Kapoor and are filled with the latter’s relatives. The Kapoor family, again, is said to be close to Raja’s wife. The five firms were: WiExpert Communications, SV Telecom Systems, Digitelco Communications, Spectrus Communications and Technotial Infoways. “All the five firms were registered on a single date, having the same notary, same auditor, same witnesses and even the same e-mail id. So much so that even the last annual general body meeting they held were on the same day.”
WiExpert’s Managing Director was Anamika Kapoor, Sanjay’s wife. Her mother, Sneh Prabha Arora, was a director of the company. SV Telecom’s head was Anamika’s father Surendra Mohan Arora. Satish Kapoor headed Spectrus Communication and the registered address of the company was Surendra Mohan Arora’s residence at Paschimi Marg in Vikaspuri, while Digitelco Communications, headed by Satish Kapoor’s wife Kamini Kapoor, was registered at their residential address in Vikaspuri. The fifth company, Technotial Infoways, was headedby Sunita Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor’s mother.
Kapoor’s companies were technically supported by WiTribe, a Qatar-based telecom firm. WiTribe is a WiMax operator in Pakistan and security concerns have been raised by opposition politicians, including AIADMK leader J Jayalalithaa.
Raja is the man now behind the women, with whom wagging tongues associate the arrangement and administration of allegedly unofficial party and possibly ‘family’ funds. Karunanidhi says, “Raja is like my son”. Tamil Nadu calls him ‘ma’pillai”, son-in-law.