Illicit India - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 205

one of them, Advanced Radio Masts (ARM) of Hyderabad supplied overpriced and poor
quality telecom equipment that caused an estimated loss of Rs 1.6 crore to the government.
In 2002, Ram was sentenced with two others to three years in jail on the ARM case, but
this was suspended, pending appeals. In November 2011, Ram, by then 86, was ordered to
serve his sentence, 45 but the Supreme Court soon granted him bail.
In January 2013, Om Prakash Chautala, the veteran head of a regional party and a former
chief minister of Haryana, was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment along with 55 other
people, including his son Ajay, for various crimes including conspiracy and forgery during
the selection of over 3,000 junior teachers in 1999. 46 The original selection list had been
replaced with fake lists during a recruitment process aimed at ending an acute shortage of
teachers in 18 districts of the state. This was exposed in 2003 when an official (who was
among those convicted) approached the Supreme Court as a whistleblower, saying he was
pressured to replace the original lists. Chautala was sent to jail in January 2013 when he
was 78, and four months later was granted interim bail for six weeks to undergo heart sur-
gery. Lacking political clout with Hooda's Congress party, he then returned to jail. In an-
other case, Bangaru Laxman, a former BJP president, was sentenced to four years in jail in
2012 at the age of 72, having been caught in a sting operation in 2001, receiving a bribe in
a defence contract, but was released on bail.
When regional parties join national coalition governments, they push for their MPs to be
given what are known as 'lucrative' ministerial posts, as M. Karunanidhi, the septuagenari-
an leader of the DMK, did successfully after a general election in 2009. He forced Manmo-
han Singh to keep Andimuthu Raja, a DMK MP, as the telecom minister despite corruption
allegations that had been building up for a year or so before the election. 47 Praful Patel of
the Maharashtra-based NCP was similarly retained as aviation minister against, it was be-
lieved, Manmohan Singh's wishes. Both the DMK and NCP were important members of
Singh's coalition government, so it was expedient to keep them happy.
Patel was aviation minister from 2004 to 2010 and then heavy industries minister. His
time dealing with aviation ministry was especially controversial because of deals for airport
projects and the decline of Air India, the national carrier, while private airlines bloomed. I
once described him on my blog as the 'government's top Teflon Man' because of the way
that suggestions of wrongdoings slipped off his back. 48 Jitender Bhargava, a former Air In-
dia executive director, mentions some of them in his book The Descent of Air India. 49 He
writes about what he describes euphemistically as Patel's political interference in the work-
ing of the airline. Decisions were taken, he says, without any consideration for the airline's
future. Foreign airlines were given far greater access to India's airports than was justified
by customer demand, which damaged Air India's ability to generate revenues. 50