The real war is over MS shoes land deal

The real war is over MS shoes land deal
ARATI R. JERATH

NEW DELHI, JULY 23: The simmering tension between Ram Jethmalani and Attorney General Soli Sorabjee erupted into full-scale war over their conflicting opinions in the controversial MS Shoes land deal.

Sorabjee, whose opinion on the deal was sought by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee last year, is believed to have ruffled Jethmalani's feathers with his comments.

In an effort to defuse the timebomb ticking under his Government on this issue, Vajpayee despatched External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to speak to both of them last Wednesday.

But Singh's troubleshooting mission obviously failed because two days later, Jethmalani lit the fuse by hitting out at Chief Justice A.S. Anand in a press statement. Jethmalani's friends feel the former law minister knew his days in the Union Cabinet were numbered and may have decided therefore to precipitate matters.

Sure enough, on Saturday, Singh called Jethmalani in Mumbai with a terse message from the PM asking him to resign. BJP sources said that matters may not have come to a head had the former law minister not taken on the Chief Justice publicly.

Allegations about the land deal have been haunting Jethmalani since his stint as Urban Development Minister in the Vajpayee Government's last term of office. Jethmalani has rebutted the allegations repeatedly by insisting that his decision in the case was right in law.

The controversy resurfaced when Rajya Sabha MP Kuldip Nayyar asked Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee a question in Parliament in the Budget session on the status of the case. With the monsoon session starting tomorrow, the Government was under pressure to be ready with a reply in case the issue cropped up again.

Although not directly related to the current crisis gripping the Centre's relations with the Shiv Sena, Jethmalani's resignation could have a snowballing effect. Reports from the Sena camp in Mumbai indicate that Bal Thackeray is enraged at the PM's action and has threatened to link the return of his three ministers to the Government with Jethmalani's rehabilitation.

Thackeray's anger is natural given that Jethmalani was his most vocal supporter in the Cabinet.

While the MS Shoes case may have been the catalyst for the Jethmalani-Sorabjee face-off, the former law minister has been an irritant for Vajpayee almost from the very beginning. As law minister, he is believed to have been locked in a running battle with not only the law officers of the Government but also with the Supreme Court.

In recent weeks, his public statements have acutely embarrassed the Government. He openly sided with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah on the autonomy issue. He criticised the Government for the recent Alliance air crash, provoking Vajpayee to chide him at a Cabinet meeting. He even antagonised his most valuable friend in the Government, Home Minister L.K. Advani, by blasting the proposal to introduce a new anti-terrorism law.

Not that there weren't problems when he was Urban Development Minister. Apart from the MS Shoes controversy, Jethmalani also got caught in the White House flats case in which he felt that the NDMC should compensate the owners of the flats that that were demolished as illegal structures. He and his secretary in the ministry did not get on so much so that the Secretary, Kiran Agarwal made it into an issue with the Cabinet Secretary and the IAS Officers Association of which she was an office-bearer.