States: Assam; Power Game

India Today
October 12,1998

ASSAM
Power Game

The LoC scam resurfaces to haunt the CM yet again.

By Avirook Sen

Governer Sinha with Mahanta Nabin Chandra Kalita is an unlikely politician. He is after all just a poor cultivator from Hajo town of Kamrup district in Assam. But his public-interest petition in the Guwahati High Court seeking to reopen the case on Assam Chief Minister P. K. Mahanta's involvement in the multi-crore letters of credit (LOC) scam is now likely to see him play a crucial role in the state's power politics.

But Kalita, who engaged a Supreme Court lawyer to file the petition on September 19, appears to be a mere pawn in an elaborate game of chess being played between Mahanta and senior Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) dissidents Bhrigu Phukan and Atul Bora. How else does one account for the lawyer's frequent trips by air to Guwahati to pursue the case? The LOC scam had been as good as closed on February 5 after governor Lt-General (retd) S.K. Sinha refused to grant the CBI sanction to prosecute the chief minister.

The Rs 400-crore scam unearthed in 1993 concerns 12 cases of fraudulent withdrawals from the state treasury on the basis of forged letters of credit. The cases were handed over to the CBI in 1994.

The dissidents' opening gambit -- the petition in Guwahati -- seems to be part of a carefully crafted strategy. If the petition is dismissed, the matter could go to Supreme Court as a special leave petition challenging the high court's dismissal order. And with the apex court coming into the picture the LOC case would acquire a higher profile. "We would like the people to know that the governor's denial of sanction to prosecute does not exonerate Mahanta," says Phukan.

However, the Supreme Court is one arena Mahanta's crisis managers want to avoid. In fact, they point out that Kalita's prayer has been shoddily formulated to ensure that it gets dismissed by the high court -- opening up the route to the Supreme Court. Mahanta's lawyers have worked out their own counter-strategy. When the matter comes up again in early November, they plan to launch personal attacks on the petitioner and call the public-interest litigation (PIL) politically motivated and mala fide. The petitioner will have to respond to each of the allegations against him. And that will consume valuable time. "We will take the case in random directions and eventually try and ensure it just gets lost among the myriad other cases in the high court," says one of Mahanta's trouble-shooters.

The immunity the governor enjoys prevented Kalita from making Sinha a party to the case. But the petition challenges the legality of the Assam Government's (the implication being that state's powers are vested in the governor) order rejecting sanction for the prosecution of Mahanta. The PIL buttresses the plea with the argument that the governor overstepped his brief by sitting in judgement on the case rather than address the question of whether it was a case fit for prosecution. The governor had also expressed doubts about the reliability of some of the witnesses.

In a press statement on February 5, Sinha had said: "The main accused (R.P. Borah, a contractor and an AGP member) having earlier stated that he had paid Rs 40 lakh to Mahanta has now suddenly changed this figure to Rs 4 crore ... the sole evidence of such an unreliable witness cannot be relied upon." Some of Sinha's statements helped the petitioner. Sinha had termed "untenable" the CBI's explanation that it had not investigated whether Mahanta had assets disproportionate to his income even as the assets of the other accused were scrutinised. The PIL is using this as the reason to reopen the investigation and file additional charges against Mahanta.

Meanwhile, the petitioner too may have to field some uncomfortable questions. Such as where he got the funds to engage an expensive lawyer. The distraction, Mahanta's friends hope, will lead the case where they want it to go: nowhere.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication