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COVER STORY: DEFENCE ESTABLISHMENT
Surgery For Graft
By Raj Chengappa and Harinder Baweja
For two days George Fernandes had agonised over
the decision to resign as defence minister. For someone who has been in
public life for 52 years, he says, it hurt most when some opposition members
called him a thief in Parliament and refused to allow him or the Government
to make a statement. On the afternoon of March 15, he made up his mind
and walked across to Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh's office at the other
end of South Block. In his hand he clutched a seven-page note that he
had prepared earlier. It was a speech to be read out on national television
rebutting the allegations and explaining why he had decided to quit. With
sadness writ across his face Singh, who knew what was coming, read the
note, making minor corrections and handed it back to Fernandes.
Later that evening, just before Fernandes went
to Doordarshan's studios to make his resignation speech, he drove to the
prime minister's house. He had known Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
for close to 30 years. They had grown to like and respect each other.
Two years ago, when Fernandes was in the vortex of the storm caused by
the dismissal of Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, the prime minister had backed
him. Fernandes would remain ever grateful
to the prime minister for his support. Now he realised that the damage
would be far more serious. When Fernandes handed over his resignation
letter to Vajpayee, he told him, "This is what had to be done."
Vajpayee took the letter solemnly, embraced Fernandes and told him softly:
"This is not the end of the road."
Given his reputation, Fernandes is unlikely
to go quietly. There was never a dull moment in the three years that Fernandes
lurked in the corridors of the Defence Ministry. Early in his tenure,
the Socialist with many faces made one more of his famous ideological
U-turns. In 1998 he embraced India's nuclear bomb despite having denounced
Indira Gandhi for conducting the 1974 nuclear test.
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| I TOLD YOU SO: After his sacking Bhagwat
had warned of the sleaze |
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For a man who
turns 71 in June Fernandes braved glacial temperatures in travelling to
Siachen as many as 18 times to show his solidarity with the jawans. For
a while he dazzled by shaking up the bureaucracy even dispatching stodgy
officials to the Himalayan heights. But after the Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
episode, the normally garrulous Fernandes uncharacteristically kept a
low profile especially during the Kargil war. The past year saw him closely
involved in bringing about a major revamp of the Ministry of Defence (MOD)
based on the recommendations of several expert committees formed post
Kargil.
Fernandes still cannot stomach the reality that
it was a lean and mean news outfit that brought his career and his credibility
crashing to an all time low. In the end, all it took was a couple of reporters-one
sporting a fake moustache, a fancy hat and the pseudonym of Alvin D'Souza-with
a fake proposal to make thermal cameras and around Rs 11 lakh in cash
to expose the sordid goings on in India's mighty defence establishment.
The country watched in shock as Major-General P.S.K. Choudhary, who held
the key post of additional director-general of the Weapons Equipment Directorate
(WED), nonchalantly accepted Rs 1 lakh from the Tehelka team in return
for inside information.
Ironically, the scandal came at a time when
Fernandes had been boasting that he had managed to clean up the procurement
system and bring in a great degree of transparency. In January 2000, he
had asked the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to look at all defence
deals since 1989 that involved a sum of over Rs 75 crore. He further brought
these under the scrutiny of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
The year 1989 was chosen as the cut-off because after the Bofors scandal,
the then government had passed a rule banning the involvement of middlemen
in defence deals.
In the early 1990s the ghost of Bofors coupled
with a crippling shortage of finance, saw purchase of new equipment dwindle
to negligible levels. But by the turn of the century even though the big
deals like those for the Sukhoi MKI fighters and T-90 main battle tanks
were still stuck, two areas saw defence dealers circle South Block again-purchase
of spares and small-ticket items that in all accounted for over Rs 1,000
crore annually. Senior officers were stunned by an explosion of what they
call "pimps" or agents who did the rounds of the ministry trying
to bag deals. Admiral Bhagwat, who was unceremoniously sacked by Fernandes
in December 1998 for questioning civilian authority, alleged that part
of the reason was because he wouldn't bend on certain deals that the ministry
wanted to push through. Meanwhile, after Kargil, with complaints pouring
in that the forces were short of equipment, the MOD went on a buying spree
that included such giant deals as the purchase of 310 T-90 tanks from
Russia at a cost of $450 million (Rs 2,070 crore). Apart from that there
were a host of smaller items, including hand-held thermal cameras that
the Tehelka reporter pretended to sell, which had agents pouring in, especially
those representing Israeli and South African companies.
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