 |
|
|
Escape
to Victory
Down and virtually out, India create a miracle at the Eden Gardens to
stun the Australians and break their winning streak.
|
|
|
THE
ARTS
|
|
|
Mixing
Metaphors Music, dance,
and tourism synthesise in the famed textile centre of Maheshwar to provide
sustainable synergies for its growth.
|
|
|
OTHER STORIES
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
Home |
|
 |
| |
COVER STORY: NDA
NDA Under Siege
By Swapan Dasgupta with Lakshmi Iyer and Farzand
Ahmed
It was a week that
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will not want to remember. But it
was a week he isn't likely to forget in a hurry. For the only time in
his parliamentary career spanning 44 years, Vajpayee had to undergo the
ignominy of being jeered and taunted as a chor (thief) by boisterous opposition
MPs determined to obstruct both Houses of Parliament. It was a week that
saw the BJP being subjected to the sorry spectacle of its national president
caught on candid camera nonchalantly accepting a cash "donation"
of Rs 1 lakh - and this disgraceful act being beamed on television across
the country.
Nor did the bloodletting triggered by the sensational
sting operation of Tehelka.com journalists, masquerading as arms dealers,
end here. By the end of the week, amid emotional scenes, Defence Minister
George Fernandes, also the convener of the National Democratic Alliance
(NDA), announced his resignation on TV. He was preceded by
his long-time companion Jaya Jaitly who stepped down as president of the
Samata Party over the impropriety of inviting arms dealers into the official
residence of the defence minister and overseeing a Rs 2-lakh donation
to her party. And, to cap it all, the mercurial Trinamool Congress leader
and Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee finally resigned, withdrew her party
from the NDA and broke her alliance with the BJP in West Bengal even as
she promised to support Vajpayee.
Not since the publication
of the Jain Commission report in INDIA TODAY, which led to the fall of
the I.K. Gujral government in 1997 has Indian journalism extracted such
a heavy price from the political establishment. West End International
may have been a mere letterhead and the deal for the sale of binoculars
to the Indian Army may have been entirely notional, but the tell-tale
recordings of a spy camera were enough to arouse public indignation and
demolish political reputations.
The political establishment stood thoroughly
exposed and discredited before a people who always equated contracts with
influence peddling and bribes. With an investment of merely Rs 21 lakh,
an enterprising dotcom was able to destroy the reputation of the Vajpayee
Government. By the end of the week, the scandal had touched the Prime
Minister's Office (PMO), with some angry Samata Party leaders threatening
to quit the Government unless Vajpayee also dismissed his Principal Secretary
Brajesh Mishra whose name kept cropping up in the Tehelka transcripts.
If Fernandes had to go on mere suspicion so must Mishra, they argued.
 |
 |
| TARGETS: Mishra has made the PMO controversial;
Bhattacharya's role is also questioned |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
METRO TODAY |
| |
 Web
Exclusives |
|
| |
A bloody crackdown on Naxalites in the south-eastern
fringes of Uttar Pradesh proves that only developmental programmes, not
guns, can help fight the menace. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Subhash
Mishra explains why in
Despatches.
|
|
|
