April 5, 1999
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UTTAR PRADESH Lady Reckoner Her proximity to Kalyan and the clout she wields makes Kusum Rai an unusual power centre. By Farzand Ahmed
Officially, the 35-year-old Kusum Rai is just a BJP corporator but her critics say the clout she wields makes her a "super chief minister" running a mini secretariat from her home. "In a democracy the government is run through consensus," remarks former chief minister Jagadambika Pal, "but in Uttar Pradesh Kalyan's Government runs through Kusum Rai." Nothing has shaken the lady, not even a recent notice served by the Income Tax Department asking her to disclose the sources of the wealth she had amassed in the past one year. The notice followed an investigation by the department into her vast assets, which allegedly include prime real estate acquired through benami transactions and a petrol pump in her native Azamgarh. The news did create a flutter in political circles but nothing else. Senior Janata Dal leader Dharmanand Tiwary says Rai is being used as a tool by a caucus to build its economic empire "through her proximity to Kalyan Singh". Panchanan Rai, a teacher-legislator who was arrested for his campaign against the corporator in Azamgarh, alleges that her assets are worth Rs 100 crore. Though the Income Tax authorities have asked Rai to file her response before March 31, her critics say nothing will come out of the matter. For someone who wields such power, Rai's origins were humble enough. She hails from a lower middle-class family in Manpur village near Azamgarh, daughter of a ground-level RSS worker. Kalyan became chief minister and Rai was introduced to him by close associates. She must have reckoned she would rise fast in his company for she soon became a part of Kalyan's circle while her unemployed husband was appointed officer on special duty in the state Information Department. Explaining her relationship with Kalyan, Rai says, "My father was an RSS-BJP leader and thus I have family relations with the chief minister." She also denies there is anything amiss in the daily visits of officials and politicians to her house. She claims that most of them are her relatives who happen to be government officials. "Should I stop meeting them just because they are officials?" she asks. Last week as dissidents within the BJP resumed their signature campaign against Kalyan's style of functioning, with Rai as their focal point, she went along with Minister of State for Human Resources Development Uma Bharati to meet Home Minister L.K. Advani and convince him that she was a committed party worker being maligned by detractors. Last year too, at the peak of the anti-Rai campaign, she invoked the name of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, even released a photograph showing herself with him, and said she was "equally close to Atalji". Kalyan, on his part, prefers not to talk about the issue. Confronted by journalists on Rai's emergence as "the most powerful lady" in the state, he cryptically remarked that if people were making a beeline to her residence, it merely proved the popularity of a BJP worker. Not surprising then that officials dare not defy her. Recently, Rajnikant Mishra, an IPS officer, was brought to Lucknow as SSP and was asked by the Government to prepare a list of the top 10 dons in the city. When a prominent political name figured in the list, Mishra received orders from Rajajipuram telling him to delete the name. He refused. Overnight he was shifted as SP (Railways). But as his actions there too hit the interest of the same mafia, he was shunted out as principal of the Police Training School. In a similar case, Varanasi District Magistrate L.B.Tiwary and Additional District Magistrate Santosh Dwivedi were removed when they did not appoint her nominee as chief of civil defence in the district. More recently, Rai ordered the Rajajipuram police station to free a youth from Poorvanchal who was arrested on criminal charges. The officials were told to either obey or "be ready to face the consequences". More shocking, when the official called the chief minister's office to complain, he was told to do as "madam wants". "Kalyan Singh should not allow anyone to emerge as an extra-constitutional authority as it would demoralise party workers and the bureaucracy," says Rajesh Pandey, MLC, a confidant of Vajpayee. But under the present scheme of things, it appears, there is little anyone can do about it. |
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She moves in a black Cielo escorted by vehicles with red beacon lights and
the chief minister's elite Cobra force. When she is out on tour, the district
administration concerned provides her with security normally reserved for a VVIP. Back in
Lucknow, she holds a daily darbar at her Rajajipuram residence where government officials
and others line up to get their problems redressed. 
