More govt secrets revealed, leak by leak
The Radia Tapes-II

The news magazine Outlook on Saturday made public more tapped conversations purportedly involving lobbyist Niira Radia and said that it had “unearthed” 800 new conversations.
The intercepts offer fresh political insight into how key portfolios were allocated when the Union Cabinet was formed after the victory of the UPA in May 2009, with the Kenyan-born British lobbyist, who counts the Tatas and Ambanis among her clients, in the thick of it, the weekly said in a press release. It said while the tapes were still being decoded, many of them already “shine a mirror on the interplay between government and big business”, especially with regard to the inclusion of Mr A. Raja in the telecom portfolio. The new conversations are part of the over 5,800 conversations now in the custody of the Supreme Court, the release said. The conversations, all part of an officially-sanctioned tap, are in addition to the 140 conversations already placed in the public domain by Outlook.

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Wiki shock for Cong

Compiled from dispatches
Washington/New Delhi

Dec. 11: Post-26/11, a section of the Congress leadership was seen playing religious politics after one of its leaders, A.R. Antulay, implied that Hindutva forces may have been involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, according to a confidential memo by the then US ambassador to India, David Mulford, released by WikiLeaks.
“The Congress Party, after first distancing itself from the comments (of Antulay, the then minority affairs minister), two days later issued a contradictory statement which implicitly endorsed the conspiracy. During this time, Antulay’s completely unsubstantiated claims gained support in ... Indian-Muslim community,” Mr Mulford wrote in his secret cable to the US state department on December 23, 2008, according to a PTI report from Washington. “Hoping to foster that support for upcoming national elections, the Congress Party cynically pulled back from its original dismissal and lent credence to the conspiracy,” Mr Mulford wrote.
The Congress Party, meanwhile, questioned the authenticity of the report on Saturday. “The high commissioner or ambassador of a country sends a secret report to its government. It’s between him and his government. Somebody claims to have found it out. Nobody has authenticated that. For any party to say something on this will not be responsible,” Congress general secretary and AICC media department chief Janardan Dwivedi said, adding, “Nobody has authenticated that (the leaked cable)”. Law minister M. Veerappa Moily said, “It is baseless.”
The leaked US diplomatic cable said that regardless of Union home minister P. Chidambaram’s dismissal of Mr Antulay’s comments, the Indian Muslim community “will continue to believe they are unfairly targeted by law enforcement and that those who investigate the truth are silenced,” he said in the cable. “The entire episode demonstrates that the Congress Party will readily stoop to the old caste/religious-based politics if it feels it is in its interest,” Mr Mulford alleged, according to the cable posted by WikiLeaks on its website on Friday, the agency report says. The US has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of these cables, but said that some 250,000 papers have been stolen from its system and demanded that WikiLeaks return them to the state department. Mr Mulford said while the killing of three high-level law enforcement officers during the Mumbai attacks, including ATS chief Hemant Karkare, “is a remarkable coincidence, the Congress Party’s initial reaction to Antulay’s outrageous comments was correct”. “But as support seemed to swell among Muslims for Antulay’s unsubstantiated claims, crass political opportunism swayed the thinking of some Congress Party leaders,” he wrote. “What’s more, the (Congress) party made the cynical political calculation to lend credence to the conspiracy even after its recent emboldening state elections victories. The party chose to pander to Muslims’ fears, providing impetus for those in the Muslim community who will continue to play up the conspiracy theory,” Mr Mulford wrote in his cable.
While “cooler heads” eventually prevailed within the Congress leadership, the idea that the party would entertain “such outlandish claims proved once again that many party leaders are still wedded to the old identity politics,” he said.
The 79-year-old Mr Antulay “was probably bewildered to find that his remarks, similar in vein to what he would have routinely made in the past to attack the BJP, created such a furore this time,” Mr Mulford said.
The cable noted that Mr Antulay “sparked a political controversy on December 17 with comments insinuating that the killing of Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare by the Mumbai terrorists was somehow linked to Karkare’s investigation of (Malegaon) bombings in which radical Hindus are suspected”.
In a related development, another Congress general secretary and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister, Mr Digvijay Singh, on Saturday landed himself in a blazing row with remarks on 26/11 terror strikes that riled the BJP and forced the Congress to distance itself from him. Mr Singh stoked a fresh controversy, saying that slain Mumbai ATS chief Hemant Karkare had told him hours before the 26/11 terror strikes that he feared for his safety from Hindu extremists. Mr Singh had earlier claimed that Karkare had talked about a threat to his life from those opposed to his probe into the Malegaon blast in which Hindu extremists were accused. “When I called him he said he was receiving some threat calls. He did not know who was calling. An article was published in a magazine linked to RSS against his son. It alleged that his son had got some `50-crore contract from Dubai while his son was just 17 years old,” the AICC leader said.
Later, explaining his remarks, Mr Singh said, “I do not want to politicise this. I haven’t said that RSS is behind 26/11. I have absolutely no doubt that he was killed by Pakistani terrorists but BJP leaders, including Rajnathji, had questioned the integrity of Karkare. The fact remains that Karkare was harassed by BJP leaders,” he said.
When asked about the Congress’ position on his comments, Mr Singh said, “What else can the party say in this? It is a conversation between me and Karkare. Unfortunately he is no more.” But the Congress was quick to distance itself from Mr Singh’s remarks, which also came under attack from the main Opposition BJP, the JD(U) and the Shiv Sena. Mr Janardan Dwivedi, when asked to comment on Mr Singh’s remarks, said, “It is regarding a conversation between two individuals. Unfortunately one of them, Karkare, is no more with us. So Digvijay Singh will be in a better position to comment on his statement.” —PTI