Minister T R Baalu's biz deals under scrutiny
Baalu is a businessman who openly uses his influence as a minister to get extra allocations for his 2 firms.
NEW DELHI: If you are a senior minister in the Cabinet and belong to the all-important DMK - like Surface Transport Minister T R Baalu, it seems you can pressurise the government for almost anything including some gains for private companies in which you have a stake.
T R Baalu is not a man of many words, and the only fact about himself that he likes to project is his unswerving loyalty to his party the DMK's founder and chief Karunanidhi. But behind the façade, it seems, is a hard nosed businessman - a businessman who has put his money into two companies namely King Chemicals and King Hi Power, as per papers he filed before the Election Commission.
Baalu is a businessman who openly uses his influence as a minister to get extra allocations for these two companies by directly lobbying with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, and making sure that top bureaucrats reporting to Mr Deora meekly follow through – like the chairman of the GAIL or Gas Authority of India limited, who wrote to the chairman of ONGC saying:
Baalu is a businessman who openly uses his influence as a minister to get extra allocations for these two companies by directly lobbying with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, and making sure that top bureaucrats reporting to Mr Deora meekly follow through – like the chairman of the GAIL or Gas Authority of India limited, who wrote to the chairman of ONGC saying:
"This has reference to the meeting taken jointly on 28.6.2006 by Hon'ble Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Union Minister for Surface Transport & Highways, with regard to allocation of gas to M/s King Chemicals and M/s King Hi Power in Cauvery basin (Tamil Nadu). During this meeting, it was considered that ONGC will look into the aspect of additional availability of gas for considering supply to the above two plants."
But here's the stunner: Openly violating protocol, and brazenly using political clout, Baalu summoned the chairman of the Gas Authority of India Limited, a man who doesn't even report to him, to make sure his companies were given the additional natural gas. This meeting happened on March 1 this year, and is also recorded in a letter, a copy of which is with TIMES NOW.
It is shocking that a minister of the seniority of T R Baalu, A senior member of the DMK actually sits in on meetings of the petroleum ministry to pressurise GAIL and ONGC to allocate gas to private companies in which he himself has a shareholding. This is something he has confessd in an affidavit to the EC just in May 2004. Balu's party is the single biggest member of the UPA, which is probably why the man's direct interference in another ministry - that too the powerful petroleum ministry - has been tolerated.
But the question is, does the Prime Minister know that one of his most senior ministers mixes business interests with governance? And that, if action is not taken, other ministers too can assume they can mix private business interests with the more critical business of running the country?
Source: By Navika Kumar, Times Now
But here's the stunner: Openly violating protocol, and brazenly using political clout, Baalu summoned the chairman of the Gas Authority of India Limited, a man who doesn't even report to him, to make sure his companies were given the additional natural gas. This meeting happened on March 1 this year, and is also recorded in a letter, a copy of which is with TIMES NOW.
It is shocking that a minister of the seniority of T R Baalu, A senior member of the DMK actually sits in on meetings of the petroleum ministry to pressurise GAIL and ONGC to allocate gas to private companies in which he himself has a shareholding. This is something he has confessd in an affidavit to the EC just in May 2004. Balu's party is the single biggest member of the UPA, which is probably why the man's direct interference in another ministry - that too the powerful petroleum ministry - has been tolerated.
But the question is, does the Prime Minister know that one of his most senior ministers mixes business interests with governance? And that, if action is not taken, other ministers too can assume they can mix private business interests with the more critical business of running the country?
Source: By Navika Kumar, Times Now
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