The sudden death of Sanjay Gandhi, who was functioning as an extra constitutional authority, during his Mother Indira Gandhi’s Regime sparked off a spate of controversies and some even linked Indira Gandhi !
Yet, the M.L. Commission appointed to enquire into this affair never submitted its report.
Death of Sanjay Gandhi.
Now WikiLeaks has disclosed ,quoting Indian Intelligence sources that there were three attempts on Sanjay Gandhi’s Life.
There are more mysteries like Lal Bahadur Shastri‘s Death in Tashkent after India won the War with Pakistan.
Story:
‘Scenario 2: Event 1, June 23rd 1980
The first player in the political theatre to have been eliminated and also the most important first link to the series of events that led to the present dispensation in the corridors of Delhi. Circumstantial evidence in the June 23rd 1980 Sanjay Gandhi air crash near Safdarjung airport points to foul play but let’s not get sucked into those futile arguments that have been raging ever since. Just suffice it to say that the single-member enquiry commission headed by Mr M L Jain which was formed to study the circumstances that lead to the plane crash has never submitted any report what so ever to the government in 3 decades. Now isn’t that fishy?
Background
Anybody who is aware of the 70’s brand of politics in India would know that Sanjay was the most important political centre, around whom most of the power was concentrated and dispensed with. Many even believed that Sanjay wielded more power than Indira Gandhi herself. It thus became pertinent for most intelligence agencies concerned with India’s affairs to have a thick case file about Sanjay Gandhi and his activities. There were some widely debunked theories of the junior Gandhi leaning towards CIA and Mrs Gandhi not being in agreement with his ideas, I do not know the origin or the veracities of these hypotheses so I would not make any comment either to encourage or discourage them. The 1960’s and 70’s Delhi was a hub of international espionage (like any other capital of any other country) because most intelligence agencies (including CIA & KGB) of that era depended on HUMINT or human intelligence officers to gather intelligence rather than satellites and drones of today. Every other day there would be speculation in the media circles of a certain politician or a certain bureaucrat working in tandem with a certain foreign intelligence agency; I would be lying if I claimed that all these speculations were wrong, in fact there were quite a few surprises in the “official” list that the Indian intelligence agencies maintained, but that is a completely different subject altogether. Coming back to Sanjay Gandhi and the interest that he generated in foreign as well as Indian intelligence circles, one thing is clear, he never worked or had any relationship with any of the foreign intelligence agencies and that much I can vouch for, but the same cannot be said about his continuous indulgence and interference with the local intelligence agencies. He always used and had his men in various wings of Indian intelligence agencies. Amidst all of this originated the “Russian hypothesis”
There were three assassination attempts on Sanjay Gandhi, a key figure during the Emergency, including one where a high powered rifle was used when the leader was visiting Uttar Pradesh, a US cable outed byWikiLeaks has claimed.
In a September 1976 dispatch, the US embassy reported the then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s younger son was targeted by an unknown assailant in a “well planned assassination attempt” which failed. The date suggests the incident occurred during the Emergency.
“Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay was shot three times on August 30 or 31 by an unknown assailant,” the cable says, attributing the information to a clandestine source. The report says Sanjay escaped and was not critically injured.
If Sanjay did suffer injuries, their nature is not specified but interestingly the cable bases its information on information provided by Indian intelligence sources.
“According to Indian intelligence, this is the third attempt on the younger Gandhi’s life,” the cable states and goes on to surmise that the attack will eventually be blamed on revolutionary elements sponsored by outside powers.
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.
Architects of Emergency in India, 1975.
“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,
Rajiv Killed By LTTE.
“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.
The same Congress shall disown and discredit her as it has done to Sanjay Gandhi .Some party, some leader and some ideology!
Recently during its plenary meeting, Congress brought up with a book – Congress and the Making of the Indian Nation, which is claimed to have hailed Sonia Gandhi for her decision to decline prime ministership after leading the UPA to power in 2004.
Sonia gandhi
“Not since the days of the freedom struggle was such a complete separation of the objective of personal power and the objective of achieving social ideals seen,” the book stated.
“People looked upon Sonia Gandhi’s renunciation of power as reminiscent of the Mahatma,” it added.
Let’s look what it has to say now on Sanjay gandhi, which, till Indira Gandhi was assassinated, did say that Sanjay was the beacon of India and one of Congress’s icons.
Sanjay Gandhi and Indira Gandhi
The Congress has all but disowned Sanjay Gandhi, blaming the excesses committed during the Emergency of 1975 on his overzealous promotion of family planning and slum clearance programme.
The rare assessment of the Emergency and the person responsible for the popular anger has come in the party’ s official history where it has attempted to walk the tightrope between defending stalwart Indira Gandhi and the stigma that her decision to suspend the Constitution in 1970s carries.
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