Kalpnath Rai: The minister who shot his mouth off and in his foot

Alok Tomar in Delhi

"This is Kalpnath Rai," the voice on the telephone said. "I will be holding a press conference at 4 pm at my residence. Trust me, it will be a blast."

So Delhi's media brigade, in anticipation of the promised 'blast', sharpened their pencils and readied for the evening. When came another telephone call, this time from a Rai aide. "So sorry," said the aide, "Mr Rai is out of town, the press conference called for this evening has been cancelled."

Better sense, apparently, had prevailed. And Rai must have decided - or more likely, had it decided for him - that discretion was the better part of shooting his mouth off.

Rai, political observers point out, is now paying the price for antagonising the prime minister and hobnobbing, a shade too publicly, with leaders of the breakaway Congress such as Narain Dutt Tiwari and Arjun Singh. There is, however, another body of opinion that makes of Rai a sacrificial goat - his present predicament, this segment of opinion holds, is part of Narasimha Rao's calculated strategy to cut the ground out from under the Bharatiya Janata Party's anti-corruption stance.

Sort of like the blind men and the elephant - each opinion appears true, yet neither appears to be the whole truth.

Kalpnath Rai has been on the wrong foot, vis a vis Rao, ever since the latter took over the reins of power. On the very day of Rao's oath-taking as prime minister, even before he could allocate portfolios to his ministers, an agitated Rai had approached his prime minister and yelled: "What is this, I hear you have given me some useless ministry?"

Arjun Singh, at the time leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, had been forced to intervene and pacify Rai on that occasion.

Much later came the sugar scam. Rai first tried, in the face of a huge Opposition outcry for his head, to hold on to his seat. Finally, he bowed to the inevitable and forwarded his resignation letter to the prime minister - and found, to his chagrin, that the letter was promptly accepted.

A stunned Rai told everyone who would listen that Rao had given him his solemn word that his letter of resignation would not be accepted, and forwarded to the President. "I have been deceived by Rao," Rai said then. "Never trust this man."

Again, after the public exit of Narain Dutt Tiwari as chief of the Uttar Pradesh unit of the Congress party, Rai was in the running for the post. However, Rao in his capacity of party president gave that particular mantle to his political advisor Jitendra Prasada, and Rai has never forgiven the prime minister for this slight.

So much for the political shenanigans, what of the Dawood connection? Again, the story seems susceptible of more than one interpretation. Subhash Thakur, sources say, had fallen out with Dawood Ibrahim much before his arrest. After this falling out, Thakur and another hitman had organised their own gang, comprising mainly goons of UP origin. So much, then, for the Dawood connection.

Thakur was arrested in July 1993. Within a fortnight, the Central Bureau of Investigation was in possession of his statement, wherein he had mentioned his stay in the NTPC guest house courtesy of Kalpanath Rai. The investigating agency, however, never questioned Rai about this at the time, or even in the following months and years.

It is only of late, since Rai became particularly vocal and visibly aligned with dissident leaders such as Tiwari and Arjun Singh, that the CBI suddenly dusted off its files, and discovered that Rai had provided accomodation and such to Subhash Thakur, hit man and Dawood Ibrahim protegee.

Interestingly, Rai shares with H K L Bhagat the dubious distinction of being the first former Union minister to be immured in jail. And equally interestingly, Rai's partner in misfortune, Bhagat, has also of late been a very vocal advocate of 'party unity' - read, patch up with Narasimha Rao's betes noire N D Tiwari and Arjun Singh.

Going by precedent, then, it seems likely that the wrath of god will soon descend on the heads of Rajesh Pilot and Balram Jakhar as well - after all, the two leaders have been as vocal as Bhagat and Rai in advocating a patch up with the Tiwari-Singh faction.

The conclusion to be drawn from these various circumstances, thus, becomes pretty obvious - recent headline making incidents all appear part of a carefully calculated political endgame designed by master manipulator Narasimha Rao.

Consider the fact that Rao, and Rao alone, has stood to gain by recent incidents - thus, he has cut the ground out from under the BJP's anti-corruption plank, he has hamstrung the dissidents within his own party, he has marginalised all possible rivals to his throne, and is now emerging as the only national leader with a spotless (never mind S K Jain confession, R K Dhawan has already alibied the prime minister out of that one) reputation.