Jatin Gandhi -The Silence of Robert Vadra // Tehelka - How Varun Gandhi silenced the system
Two years before he lost faith in the ‘Mango people’, Robert Vadra told The Times of India that he had been under party pressure to contest the 2009 Lok Sabha election from Sultanpur, the constituency adjoining his mother-in-law Sonia Gandhi’s Raebareli and brother-in-law Rahul Gandhi’s Amethi. “There was a huge demand for me to stand [from Sultanpur],” he told the paper, “but I was clear that it was not my place. I was being recognised only because of the family.”
Unknowingly, Vadra had gone to the heart of the matter that is now being contested in the public domain after charges of a nexus between him and DLF have been levelled by the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement reborn as a political party. What Vadra, as Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, acknowledged in 2009 is exactly what the party loyal to the family he has married into has failed to accept today. This is as true of the host of lawyers who think politics in this country is entirely a matter of what is legally tenable, and that issues of propriety or public perception do not count in a democracy.
Would it have been a crime for Robert Vadra to contest the 2009 polls? Would any court in the country have struck it down? But Vadra thought it better not to, because he was paying heed to public perception. Why, then, should the same logic of public perception not apply to his business dealings? After all, he has shown due care in the past to avoid precisely such perceptions of any business that his family might have conducted.
THE PAST
The media discovered the Vadras—a Punjabi family with business interests in Moradabad and a house in Delhi’s posh New Friends Colony—barely weeks before the wedding of Robert and Priyanka in February 1997. Bhavdeep Kang of Outlook, in a report titled ‘The groom of 1997’, pieced together information from interviews with Vadra, his friends, family and business associates back in Moradabad. Kang found Vadra ‘extremely charming, soft spoken and poised, without the slightest hint of pretension. Mr Nice Guy in person’. Among other things, she described Vadra as only ‘moderately well to do’ and not the high-flying business success that he clearly is today.
At the time of his marriage, Vadra was 28, and ran a costume jewellery export firm called Artex in Delhi, having broken away from his father Rajindra Vadra’s brass export business. The Vadheras, as they once spelt their family name, were originally from Sialkot (now in Pakistan), and had set up a brass business seven years after Partition in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. Back in undivided Punjab, Robert’s grandfather Hukumat Rai Vadhera ran a sports goods business, but moved to Karnataka immediately after Partition and set up Mysore Electroplating. From metal coating, the family moved into metal exports, setting up base in Moradabad, where they took the surname ‘Vadra’, and as their business did well, they got themselves a house in Delhi.
In the first edition of his book on Sonia Gandhi (the material is missing in subsequent editions), journalist Rashid Kidwai notes that five years after the Robert-Priyanka marriage, Sonia had to caution party leaders not to have anything to do with ‘close relatives of Robert Vadra’. Sonia Gandhi’s directive came after Vadra had issued a public notice severing ties with his family.
That notice, drafted by Arun Bhardwaj, son of former Law Minister Hans Raj Bhardwaj (currently Governor of Karnataka), read: ‘It has been brought to the notice of my client that some persons including Rajindra Vadra (Robert’s father, now dead) resident of C-7, Amar Colony and Richard Vadra, resident of Basant Vihar Colony, Civil Lines, Moradabad, UP, are misrepresenting to the public that they are working on behalf of my client and allegedly promising jobs and other favours in return for money. Even though Rajindra Vadra and Richard Vadra are relatives of my client they have no access to my client. Public at large is hereby put to notice that my client has not authorised Rajindra Vadra and Richard Vadra and anyone else to work for him or to use his name in any manner and make such misrepresentations to anybody. Such misrepresentations are without the knowledge and consent of my client.’
According to Kidwai, ‘Informed sources said Sonia took the step of issuing a directive to chief ministers of party ruled states, AICC functionaries and others after receiving many complaints that the Vadras (not Robert) were seeking favours using the Nehru-Gandhi family name. It was said that when Salman Khurshid was UPCC president, Robert’s brother Richard (now dead) had allegedly called him up to recommend names of some local politicians from hometown Moradabad.’
Robert’s livid father told an interviewer, “Robert himself makes calls for his friends, why can’t I make a call for a friend who can’t pay lakhs in donation for a school admission?”
In a subsequent interview, Robert claimed that his move was pre-emptive, aimed at stopping the two, especially his brother Richard, in their tracks. “When people come to me for favours, I immediately say ‘no’. I mind my own business. It’s not a large one. But it helps me make ends meet and I have a happy life. That’s what it’s all about. Now, after this advertisement, people who approach [my relatives] will stop doing so. All this will stop. It’s not just my relatives, it’s also people who think they can get to me and Priyanka. And that’s not going to happen. In the long run, this advertisement was a smart idea. It’s better to act now before anyone is hurt.”
Today, Vadra cannot make the same claims about his business. The question is not whether his business makes ends meets, or even if he leads a happy life. What matters today is his prolonged silence on charges of far greater impropriety. In a country committed in principle to its citizens’ right to information, and one long menaced by the phenomenon of power peddling, people at large have a right to know how Robert Vadra’s businesses grew so quickly once the UPA was in power. .. read more:
Varun is now perhaps unique in the history of the Indian legal system. He had three cases against him with 88 prosecution witnesses. Every single one of them has turned hostile. Just this is enough to raise suspicions. Surely, the higher courts need to take note of it. It’s not just Varun’s reputation that is at stake, but the whole idea of credible courts. If the perpetrators of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots had been brought to book, perhaps the carnage of 2002 would have been less vile and rampant, if not stemmed altogether. The political patronage given to the perpetrators of 1984 gave rise to people like Babu Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani. If Varun had been meted proportionate punishment in time, perhaps Akbaruddin Owaisi would have learnt to hold his tongue.
