Life In Freebie Zone

Aneil Mathrani's penchant for throwing his weight around dates back to 1997. Then a joint secretary in the foreign affairs cell, AICC, he wrote a letter to all foreign embassies asking them not to recognise any Youth Congress leader who may approach them. The letter's subtext was to corner all invitations to foreign embassy parties for himself, much to the chagrin of young turks looking to developing contacts in the spiffy cocktail circuit of the capital.

This isn't to say they didn't have their recompense even in those days. Party functionaries beat him up on two occasions, once after he was caught in a delicate situation with a woman in an AICC jeep. His libido was the provocation in the other incident as well, necking with a foreign woman even as he was at the wheel of his white Opel. Mathrani lost control and bumped into another car which, coincidentally, was an AICC functionary's. Mathrani was roughed up. Accustomed to freebies, he once checked into Delhi's Ashoka Hotel on November 1, 1995, and stayed in room 537 till December 3, running up a bill of Rs 90,650.65 (Bill No. 23638; RV No. 7312). He didn't pay the bill and checked out unnoticed. A part of the amount is yet to be recovered from him.

In those youthful, wayward days, Mathrani was a problem only for Congressmen. But on the party's return to power last year, he became, to quote a diplomatic source, a "regular pest" in the MEA. He would demand that officers prepare 'talking points' for Sonia Gandhi's interaction with foreign dignitaries. On at least two occasions, he threw back these 'talking points' at territorial division joint secretaries, dismissing what they had prepared as "sub-standard". These had to be subsequently reworked to Mathrani's satisfaction. "He was basically a note-taker," says a Congress source, "always in and out of the office of the staff of Mrs Gandhi. But he passed himself off as the semi-foreign minister of the Congress party."

Mathrani soon grew in ambition, and began to demand an ambassadorial posting for the services rendered to the party for over 20 years. Congress sources say it was finally decided that he should be sent away to some "small country". The idea was to get him out of everybody's hair. Croatia was the chosen destination. There he demanded a whopping half a million dollars for refurbishing the embassy, which he insisted was decrepit.

But the Central European country didn't satisfy Mathrani. He began to lobby for a better posting. He said he wanted to be concurrently accredited to Austria and Slovenia but was turned down. Then he wanted to be "made a roving ambassador". This too was rejected. He wanted to accompany Sonia Gandhi to Moscow in May. The proposal was also squashed.

In April-May, Mathrani was transferred out of Zagreb. But he said he wanted "4-5 weeks to pack up and say his farewells. Thereafter", says a diplomatic source, "he started dissimulating. He went back and didn't do anything. Then he came back on consultation approved by the minister. We wanted to know what the hell was happening...he said he was having discussions about his future." Mathrani rushed back to Croatia when the Volcker controversy rocked the country. Back there, he didn't endear himself. MEA sources confirm what people in Zagreb say: he was unpopular and disliked. "His personal conduct was unbecoming of an ambassador," says the source.