Minister Sans Any Powers

INDRAJIT Gupta, unlike some of his predecessors, does not hold durbars in the Union Home Ministry. He has steered clear of lobbies and does not call officials to his room until he needs to discuss a certain file. Not that the experiment of having an ageing Communist ideologue at the helm of the conservative, bureaucracy-dominated Union Home Ministry was ever going to be easy, but Gupta finds himself in a rather difficult situation. An office once dominated by the vibrant Vallabhbhai Patel now seems bereft of any activity. In fact, in the last few months of United Front (UF) rule, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has functioned as the Union Home Ministry—and the home minister has been firmly kept on the sidelines. "I can count the number of decisions the home minister has taken. In most cases, he seems to have been overruled. Only the Romesh Bhandari episode snowballed into a controversy," says a key Gupta aide. He should know. First, Gupta was overruled when he wanted to get rid of Union Home Secretary K. Padmanabhaiah; then he was not consulted in the appointment of a couple of governors. And his objections regarding the extension to Maharashtra Chief Secretary Dinesh Afzalpurkar were brushed aside. Gupta, a major anti-establishment player for most of his political life, finds himself cornered.

Gupta had even shortlisted the new home secretary—Arvind Verma, a 1963 batch officer from Uttar Pradesh—when he was told that Padmanabhaiah would stay on for a year, whether he liked it or not.

Slowly, Gupta has been made to realise that he is but a dummy home minister—he has only a responsibility, not the powers to carry out his orders. Last month, Gupta put it down on file that on no account should the Maharashtra Chief Secretary Afzal-purkar get an extension. He cited the CBI case which had charged Afzalpurkar with "corruption and criminal breach of trust" for leasing out prime property at throwaway prices to Kiran Chaudhary, daughter-in-law of Haryana chief minister Bansi Lal and close friend of former central minister Jagdish Tytler. Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda intervened, overruled the home minister and cleared the extension of  Afzalpurkar, who is reportedly close to the Shiv Sena strongman, Bal Thackeray.

Gupta is not liking it, but is unable to do much about the situation. In fact, Gupta's battle with Bhandari started even before he took over as governor of Uttar Pradesh. The home minister had staunchly opposed Bhandari's appointment when it first came up for consideration. After all, Bhandari had hardly endeared himself to the Left Front during his tenure at the Raj Bhavan in Aga-rtala. Gupta was in favour of any old retired socialist with a distinguished public life. But he had to settle for Bhandari. According to a source, Gupta even took the initiative and spoke to some "key officials in the PMO to stop Bhandari's appointment but Deve Gowda and the Congress had made up their minds". There was also the Mulayam Singh Yadav factor:the defence minister was rooting for the former foreign secretary.

A similar thing happened when Fatima Meer was appointed governor of Tamil Nadu and Justice (retd) S. S. Kang, the governor of Kerala. Gupta made known his reservations and, for a while, even seemed to have got his way until a late-night announcement from his own ministry took him and everyone else by surprise.

To complete the home minister's humiliation, the PMO has also reportedly begun looking into routine appointments of the Central Police Organisations. This at a time when Deve Gowda's PMO is considered nowhere as powerful as the PMO under Rajiv Gandhi or Narasimha Rao. Take the appointment of the Intelligence Bureau director, Arun Bhagat. Gupta was apparently in fav-our of a West Bengal cadre officer for the job but his recommendation was bypassed.

Gupta was so piqued that when the Government sought his opinion about the appointment of the CBI director after K. Vijaya Rama Rao's retirement, he refused to suggest any names.

PARLIAMENTARY Affairs Minister Srikant Jena even cracks a joke at his expense: "There are two Indrajit Guptas, one the Government and the other himself." Gupta's critics are less charitable. Former Congress MP and columnist Mani Shankar Aiyar says Gupta is playing the politics of opportunism. "An opportunist in politics will always be successful, but when a principled man takes to opportunism, he will go the Indrajit Gupta way." Things have reached such a sorry pass that Gupta now prefers to defer decisions if he can help it. The two raging controversies in the ministry: the investigation into the Rattan Sehgal espionage case and the question whether the Rashtriya Rifles in the Kashmir Valley should be scrapped.

Gupta is said to be in favour of continuing with the Rashtriya Rifles in the Valley until 'normalcy' is restored. But under pressure from Gupta's deputy, Maqbool Dar, and the PMO, the Government announced in the Rajya Sabha last week that it wanted to terminate the Rashtriya Rifles' services when its tenure expires in August. Dar, who is one of the two National Conference nominees in the Union council of ministers, has pointed out that the Rashtriya Rifles is particularly disliked among the people of the Kashmir Valley because of the manner in which it handled counter-insurgency operations. The surrendered militants, who were used by the government as counter-insurgents against the Hizbul Mujahideen, functioned under the direct supervision of the Rashtriya Rifles. Not surprisingly, Gupta has practically stopped giving his opinion on Kashmir affairs—which in any case was handed over to the PMO during the tenure of former prime minister Narasimha Rao.

And when the Government decided to investigate the Rattan Sehgal episode, the home minister kept away from deliberations. Even when a special panel was set up by the Home Ministry, Gupta opposed its formation on the grounds that intelligence operations need some cover. His argument: if there is a full-scale investigation into what really happened, it could open a pandora's box in intelligence circles and hamper its functioning.

Unfortunately for Gupta, his isolation in the Government has been matched by indifference from his own party. While CPI leaders decline to speak on any controversy, senior party leader M. Farooqi says the bad times are about to end. "Give it some time. It will be all right," he points out, adding tactfully that a coalition government is a relatively new concept in the country.

But it is doubtful whether other CPI leaders—particularly A.B. Bardhan—see it in the same light. Bardhan, often called the "most pro-CPI(M) man in the CPI", shrugged off any query about Gupta's discomfiture in the Government. What's worse, at the recent UF parliamentary party meeting, when CPI MP Javed Ansari took up Gupta's case against Bhandari, he was shouted down by Samajwadi Party strongman Pappu Yadav for "playing into the BJP's hands". CPI(M) general secretary Harki-shan Singh Surjeet kept quiet through all this. When another former ally, Mulayam Singh Yadav, demanded that TADA cases be reviewed, Gupta shot off a letter in reply, saying that TADA cases are already under review.

The latest edition of the CPI organ, New Age, echoes Gupta's views on Uttar Pradesh. "The deterioration in the law and order situation in the biggest state in the country is nothing new. It is not the increasing or decreasing number of registered cases of rape, theft, dacoity and murder which worries one. What is most terrifying is the fact that the state is virtually coming under the rule of mafia-like gangs based on castes and with political affiliations"—a considerable shift from the CPI's earlier position on 'caste gangs'.

Ministry officials say the relations between the Prime Minister and his home minister are visibly strained and that they are barely on talking terms. Last week, Gowda told party MPs that "Bhandari has fought well against communalism". What is worse for Gupta is the fact that his party is in no mood to pull out of the Government. Clearly, if the home minister's stand on a state which now has 180 MLAs with criminal records—it had 35 tainted MLAs in 1985—can lead to such a furore, it is proof enough that Indrajit Gupta's isolation is complete.