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Piqued Jaya gets party secretary to reply to Brajesh Mishra's letter

All India Anna DMK chief J Jayalalitha, who had alleged that persons close to the prime minister had received hefty bribes for shifting Enforcement Director M K Bezbaruah, today implied that her charge was based on adverse inferences, but offered no tangible proof for it as demanded by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee.

P Mahalingam, executive secretary, AIADMK headquarters, who was authorised by Jayalalitha to reply to the PM's letter sent by Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra, acknowledged receipt of a fax copy of the letter and reiterated her demand for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe to bring out the truth behind Bezbaruah's transfer.

The reply gave no proof for the allegation but maintained that frequent interaction between senior officials of a newspaper group with a gentleman who was till recently part of the PMO, would naturally lead to adverse inferences .

Interestingly, Jayalalitha chose not to reply directly to Mishra and instead asked the party headquarters executive secretary to reply, apparently piqued by Vajpayee not directly writing to her.

The reply drew Mishra's attention to Vajpayee's own letter to the then prime minister I K Gujral (when the former was leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha) making serious allegations against the same newspaper group and demanding a probe.

Clearly, Vajpayee had good reason then to write such a letter, exactly as the AIADMK general secretary had done now, it stated.

Acknowledging that the AIADMK was a senior partner in the ruling coalition, the letter reminded Mishra that corruption is a cancer that drains the national life and those at the highest level must not merely be above suspicion, but also be seen to be so .

"I am sure the prime minister would not have forgotten his own letter and statements nor would he fail to realise the gravity of repeated contacts with a group under investigation for serious offences," it said.

The letter read, "It is suggested that a full CBI inquiry take place into the furious lobbying that preceded the transfer of Bezbaruah. Such an inquiry will reveal the motive behind the shifting of an upright officer more than two years before his tenure ends." The letter also sought to close the entire controversy by reinstating Bezbaruah as enforcement director, thus giving substance to Vajpayee's references to corruption and his resolve no not to surrender to undesirable forces in his Independence Day address to the nation.

Jayalalitha's reply was released to the press in Madras before it reached Mishra.

While the AIADMK had maintained yesterday that Jayalalitha had not yet received the prime minister's letter, it had acknowledged today that only a fax copy of the letter had been received and that the original was yet to come.

Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy today asserted that the Supreme Court's observation yesterday about Bezbaruah's transfer, while considering his public interest litigation on the Indian Bank scam, "confirms the suspicion" of Jayalalitha about the real reason for the transfer.

Talking to reporters in Madras, Dr Swamy said the prime minister's defence of the transfer further "debunks the insidious RSS propaganda that the transfer was effected at the behest of Jayalalitha."

Now that the Supreme Court had directed the government to file an affidavit on the transfer on September 8, the prime minister had better order a CBI probe, he said.

If the government failed to do so, he would request the Supreme Court to order such a probe at the next hearing of the PIL, he added.

UNI

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