NEW DELHI: In our last issue we had published an article on the Agriculture Minister of India being involved in a petty land scandal with a footnote that the minister had threatened the paper (Indian Express) and the reporter.
Bhajan Lal did Keep his promise. He called the editor of Indian Express, Arun Shourie. We reproduce in Shourie’s own words the enlightening conversation.
“Yeh kya kar rahe ho?”” What is this you are doing,” he asked. “Akhbaar nikaal rahe ho ya mere bare mein ishtihaar chhaap rahe ho?” “Are you producing a newspaper or a poster against me?”
That is a promising beginning, I thought. And I asked him whether he was ringing me up as one of those self-styled “chaudhries” of Haryana or as a Minister. What was it that had bothered him so much, I inquired, that he had telephoned me.
“First you published the photograph of my house,” he said in Haryanvi Hindi. “completely distorted. Diwaar teen foot unchi bhi nahin hai.” “The wall is not even three feet high” he said.
I told him that as he had tried to explain away the photograph and the dispatch about his mansion claiming it was all “a photographic trick” we had published two further photographs of his house: one taken from a distance and other showing the house itself. And they certainly do not show the house of a man who on his own written declaration was a commission agent earning but 200 rupees a month till he became a legislator and Minister and has since been making do with his official salary.
Aur ab bees saal purani cheez utha di hai, paanch acre ki, hesaid “and now you have raked up a twenty year old thing, and that of five acres.” (He was referring to an account filed by my colleague Rahul Pathak about Bhajan Lal having grabbed five acres of land from some poor farmers by promising a plot in exchange which he never delivered).
But what is wrong with the account, I asked.
He wouldn’t say.
“Par aap yeh kar kyon rahe ho?” —”but why are you doing this?” he asked.
But why not? You are a minister, [told him, paid for by the taxes we pay. What you do, the assets you and your family acquire are matters of public importance. Why should the paper not examine them? And where is the error in what we have published?
He still would not say.
“Aur meri gharwali, jisne ghar se bahar kabhi ek kadam tak nahin rakha”, “And my wife who has not taken so much as step out of the house” she had stood for elections, he said and without visiting the constituency even once, had won by 12,000 votes.
But what had that to do with the facts which the paper had published, I asked.
He said he had volunteered to face a commission of inquiry. He had faced one, he said and had been cleared. Had anyone else done that, he asked.
But what had all that to do with what we had published, 1 asked again.
“Us langde se”
“Yeh sab is liye chap raha hai” he said. “Kyonki is reporter nein yeh jo Rahul Pathak hai isne ek lakh rupeya aur ek Maruti us langde si hai’™All this is being published because this reporter — this Rahul Pathak has taken one lakh rupees and one Maruti from that Jangda” that lame fellow.
Kya kahaa aapne? “What did you say?” I asked my blood boiling.
He repeated the aspersion with tenewed derisive scom when he came to the “us langde se”
I was incensed. But my blood
boiled I must confess not at the canard this vulgur lout of a minister was purveying about my colleague, that was idiotic in any case as at that derision that hateful vulgar scorn of his in referring to whoever it was who was lame.
“Aur mere paas iska pooraa saboot hai”“And I have full proof of this” — he said.
Well then why are you ringing me up, I asked. Why don’t you call a press conference and release the proof? I will send a reporter, I told him.
The lame person referred to was Om Prakash Chautala, the elder son of Devi Lal the Chief Minister of Haryana.
Subsequently, Bhajan Lal had to run away thrice from press conferences when asked for evidence on his charge against the reporter. When asked to apologise he left in a huff.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 8, 1989
