WHAT’S AILING THE BJP IN BIHAR?
Union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has upped the ante in the phone-tapping row surrounding an alleged plot last year to pull down the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan. The 53-year-old BJP leader lodged a complaint in New Delhi on March 25, alleging that his phone was illegally tapped in July 2020 and the conversations leaked to the media. The Delhi police registered an FIR on the basis of the complaint.
Gehlot had cited the recorded conversations to allege that Shekhawat was the main conspirator in the failed attempt to topple his government in connivance with Sachin Pilot, then deputy chief minister of Rajasthan and state Congress chief.
In his complaint, Shekhawat alleged that the illegal phone tap was a violation of Section 26 of the Indian Telegraph Act. But the FIR adds charges under other provisions of the law—Section 72 of the Information Technology Act (breach of confidentiality and privacy), Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code or IPC (criminal breach of trust by a public servant entrusted with property) and Section 120B of IPC (criminal conspiracy). The main accused in the FIR is Lokesh Sharma, officer on special duty to assist the Rajasthan chief minister, who has admitted sending one clip from the tapes that he received on social media to mediapersons, and which Mahesh Joshi, chief whip of the Congress legislature party in Rajasthan, used to get the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police to lodge a case of sedition against Shekhawat and others. The sedition case was subsequently closed and the FIR transferred to Rajasthan’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).
Shekhawat’s move signals a BJP plan to corner Gehlot on the phone-tapping issue after the ongoing assembly elections in several states. But it is a gamble, trying as it does to segregate the issue of whether the tapping was legal from the drift of the conversations recorded, which point to horse-trading of MLAs. The FIR indicates that Shekhawat’s phone was tapped and conversations about toppling Gehlot—currently being investigated by the ACB—did take place. This contradicts Shekhawat’s earlier stand that the voice in the tapes had a different accent from his, as also a plea in a Jaipur court last year by BJP state spokesperson Laxmikant Bhardwaj that an FIR be registered against Sharma and others for allegedly using fake audio to tarnish the image of BJP leaders.
BJP insiders say the party’s next strategy could be to get the courts to transfer all the phone tap-related cases to the CBI. About Shekhawat’s FIR, Jaipur-based lawyer Ajay Jain says: “Shekhawat had not mentioned [in the complaint] that the tapping was done in Delhi. How then could he lodge a case there? Shekhawat’s refusal at first to cooperate with Rajasthan’s investigative agencies and the inordinate delay in lodging the FIR suggest a political motive [in the entire affair].”
Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia defends the FIR, saying: “We effectively raised the phone-tapping issue in the assembly. It forced the Gehlot government to admit that phones were tapped and the chief minister’s OSD was involved. This must have given Shekhawat a strong reason to go for the FIR.”
Shekhawat said on March 28 that he had filed the complaint to ascertain if, and how, the phones had been tapped. His move also appears to be aimed at getting the
investigative agencies to interrogate OSD Sharma in order to trace the source of the leaked tapes. “If the phone-tapping was done legally, how did it reach the chief minister’s office and how did his OSD access it and make it go viral?” asks Shekhawat. He claims that some officers have told him that at least some of the phone taps were illegal.
Shekhawat’s political rise has been rather quick and he is seen as eager to position himself as Gehlot’s main rival in Rajasthan. Son of a state public health department engineer, Shekhawat was, in 1992, elected as students’ union president at the Jodhpur-based Jai Narain Vyas University. He had contested on an ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) ticket. He moved to Ethiopia for his farming business but maintained his association with affiliate organisations of the Sangh Parivar, which got him the BJP ticket from Jodhpur in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Shekhawat defeated Chandresh Kumari Katoch, the sitting MP and sister of the erstwhile maharaja of Jodhpur, Gaj Singh.
Shekhawat’s knowledge of technological advances in farming impressed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he was appointed MoS agriculture in 2017. Modi also banked on Shekhawat for feedback on grassroots issues in Rajasthan. Shekhawat retained the Jodhpur seat in the 2019 general election by defeating Gehlot’s son Vaibhav and was elevated to cabinet minister for the newly formed Jal Shakti ministry. In 2018, Modi and then BJP chief Amit Shah had pushed Shekhawat’s name for Rajasthan BJP chief, but it was successfully opposed by then chief minister Vasundhara Raje, a move that ironically elevated him to the stature of a potential chief ministerial candidate.
While the FIR could give Gehlot a reason to worry, Shekhawat too will face the heat should the chief minister get the SOG to speed up investigation into the alleged embezzlement of about Rs 900 crore of investors’ money by the Sanjeevani Credit Cooperative Society, based primarily in Jodhpur and a few other cities in Rajasthan and the neighbouring states. Shekhawat’s alleged role in the case is under scrutiny. The ongoing probe has revealed that the society purchased for Rs 100 crore—at hundred times the value—shares that Shekhawat and his wife allegedly owned in one Navprabha Buildtech, which had assets worth Rs 4.5 crore and a debt of Rs 10 crore.
While the SOG has not yet named Shekhawat as an accused in its two charge-sheets, the agency has little expertise to investigate illegalities and money laundering in such transactions. Advocate Jain claims it is a case of converting black money into white by defrauding investors of the cooperative society. Shekhawat refutes the charges and says no family member of his has ever been a member of the society and that the money he received was from the sale of his Navprabha shares to the society.
It’s hard to predict who will blink first in the ShekhawatGehlot phone-tap face-off. Will the two continue to target each other aggressively or will they ultimately enter a truce by closing the cases against each other? After all, there are no permanent enemies in politics. One leader almost certainly pleased with these developments is Pilot, hoping that the BJP heat on Gehlot will tilt the scales in his favour, making him more agreeable to the Congress high command and aiding his reinstatement in the state government or party executive, positions he lost after the failed coup last year. ■
BJP INSIDERS SAY THE PARTY’S NEXT STRATEGY COULD BE TO GET THE COURTS TO TRANSFER ALL THE PHONE TAP-RELATED CASES TO THE CBI