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Shourie budget gag claim stings BJP

Former NDA minister Arun Shourie has said he was replaced as a lead speaker in a budget debate over fears that he would oppose a proposal that may have benefited Mukesh Ambani, bring the BJP under glare at a time the party has been targeting the Congress on corruption.

The statement also reflects how much Shourie and the BJP have drifted apart since the dramatic events triggered by the party’s defeat in the general elections of 2009.

Shourie, in an interview with Karan Thapar for Devil’s Advocate on CNN-IBN, was referring to the Niira Radia tapes that feature purported conversations the lobbyist had with industrialists, journalists and politicians.

Shourie said there was no doubt that in one of the tapes, it was clear that someone arranged for replacing him with former BJP president Venkaiah Naidu as a lead speaker from the party during the budget debate in 2009.

Shourie said the objective of replacing him was clear from the tapes as those behind the move may have feared that he would attack a budget proposal that was going to help Ambani.

“This was because I had spoken about that particular proposal in an adverse way in a party meeting. I mean how they got to know of this...? Anyhow, they got to know of this and this was their apprehension certainly. I may or may not have spoken about it on the floor of the House,” he said.

To a question whether senior leaders of the BJP were susceptible to and influenced by lobbyists, he said: “Well, I would actually think that all parties are of the same nature in the sense that you see if you are becoming a national party, for instance, you would need resources, you will have to get it from these persons.

“Second is that if you are businessmen, you would have to be prudent enough to see different parties are in power in different states, so you must have relation with all parties.”

Asked about the conversations on the tapes that suggested he would take hard line on the budgetary proposal because he was allegedly allied with Mukesh’s estranged younger brother, Anil Ambani, Shourie said: “This is the conspiracy theory by which this kind of liaison is being justified.”

The BJP’s chief spokesperson, Ravi Shankar Prasad, and its parliamentary party spokesperson, S.S. Ahluwalia, refused to respond to Shourie’s statements, saying they needed to watch his interview as well as read the parliamentary proceedings of 2009 before saying anything.

However, sources said that the Ambani brothers’ dispute and the issue of gas price had figured at some of the BJP parliamentary party meetings in 2009. Asked by some MPs what the party’s stand was, the leaders had decided the party would not publicly speak on either the Ambanis’ spat or on gas price.

But some leaders reckoned that Shourie might speak out on his own. Shortly after the BJP lost the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Shourie was the first to object to “insiders” such as Arun Jaitley and Sudheendra Kulkarni (then a political aide to L.K. Advani) allegedly analysing the reasons for the defeat in the media instead of offering a structured analysis within the party.

Along with Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha, Shourie had then questioned the “reward-and-punishment” norm that was pursued in the BJP after Jaitley was made the Rajya Sabha Opposition leader. Jaitley was the chief strategist of the elections.

The dissenters were acted against in varying degrees: Singh was expelled (he was later taken back), Sinha was sidelined in the organisation and the parliamentary party and Shourie was not renominated to the Rajya Sabha when his term expired.

Shourie continues to be a member of the national executive but was not seen at the meetings held in 2010.

In a TV interview last week, Shourie had opposed the BJP’s insistence on a joint parliamentary committee probe into the recent scams, saying previous committees had achieved little and helped the government in pushing matters under the carpet.

Asked if he had spoken on this to BJP leaders, he said: “Actually, I am hardly in touch with the party as a party now. There are good friends as individuals.”