The recent WikiLeaks expose of US Embassy Cables have disclosed that AK Antony , Defense Minister of India was the one ,apart from Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, Youth Congress Leader of the Emergency imposed Period in India,to oppose Sanjay Gandhi, the extra Constitutional Power Center at that time.
It is also credited with Jayalalithaa, the then Chief Minister, Tamil Nadu,India with flushing out the LTTE in the State.
These facts we know and why AK Antony is in a prime post in the dispensation of Sonia Gandhi-enemy of enemy is my friend!
The curious fact is not these facts themselves , but who revealed this information to US Embassy officials.
“The cable quoted a private assessment given by a Times of India correspondent who covered the session to his editors. The reporter noted, “that, unlike AICC sessions earlier this year in Chandigarh and Delhi where there was heavy rush by ministers and other politicians to pay respects to Sanjay, this time an attitude of sullenness prevailed and aside from handful of hangers-on, there were few “foot kissers”.
How come this information reached the US Embassy Officials?
Now on Jayalalithaa,
“A bureaucrat, who held a key security portfolio at the time, told post (embassy officials) that Jayalalithaa ordered him to do ‘whatever it takes to finish off the LTTE’ in Tamil Nadu, even if it required extrajudicial killings of LTTE associates in the state,” said a dispatch sent by the then US consul general in Chennai, Andrew T Simkin. The cable further added that she is an “iron lady” and “even her fiercest critics acknowledge that Jayalalithaa’s aggressive approach went a long way towards pushing the LTTE out of Tamil Nadu”.
In this case the informer is a Senior Bureaucrat from the Government of Tamil Nadu who was handling the LTTE issue!
Media and Bureaucrats as Informers to Foreign Government?
Story:
Editor of Maharashtra Times told US diplomats that foreign minister Y B Chavan confided to him that he was hearing increasing murmurs of dissatisfaction from Congressmen at the treatment being accorded Sanjay and the disdain being displayed for traditional Congress politicians.
The cable said at one point in Youth Congress session in Guwahati, its president Ambika Sonicomplained that Congressmen sometimes “obstructed” Youth Congress work: “their fear is that if the Youth Congress workers forge ahead by dint of their work, their chairs will be threatened. We do not want their chairs.”
Soni was made the YC president after Sanjay ousted Das Munshi. The cable described Soni as “an attractive, well-educated, outspoken but intellectually weak personality who has been working in the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) bureaucracy since 1969.”
Meanwhile, in Kerala, the faction led by Antony and a large section of people were very critical of Sanjay’s growing importance. A cable from the US embassy said that their impression was that “Sanjay Gandhi is not very popular in that state”
“On the contrary, the US mission officials had written to their bosses in April 1990 that then chief minister M Karunanidhi was tilting towards the LTTE. The cable sent almost a year before his government was dismissed, said his pro-LTTE stand was generating widespread controversy and dismay in Tamil Nadu, particularly in the light of his strained relations with the Tigers in the past.
He was burning bridges with Delhi because of his hardliner pro-Tamil Eelam stand, the cable said and added that it may be at significant political cost. The US mission also raised suspicion as to whether Karunanidhi had put up with the LTTE activities in Tamil Nadu out of fear for the terrorist group.
One should not discount the role of the government of India in supporting the LTTE. It should not have permitted the LTTE to operate from Indian soil, said G Parthasarathy, former diplomat, who was in Rajiv Gandhi’s office from 1986 to 1989. “Karunanidhi was viciously critical of the LTTE in the past. But once he returned to power in 1989, he turned an LTTE supporter,” said Parthasarathy. His mistake was that he allowed the constitutional machinery to break down in Tamil Nadu as LTTE ran riot, he said. The 1991 electoral verdict was against the LTTE and terrorism and Jayalalithaa was just fulfilling her constitutional duty in flushing them out, Parthasarathy added.
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