Controversial Swing

Bhandari was the man behind the attempt to frame senior Opposition leaders following Harshad Mehta's 'disclosure' that he had paid money to P.V. Narasimha Rao. In a reply of l'affaire St Kitts, he tried to get hold of forged affidavits implicating senior politicians and showing that they had received money from Harshad Mehta. He used the service of one Randhir Jain, whom he gave a letter of introduction describing him as an "eminent lawyer and a friend of some years". When the scandal blew in his face, he tried to wriggle out of it. In his alleged memoir, he practically disowns Jain!

As lt governor of Delhi, he tried, unsuccessfully, to call in the Army after it was evident that the Congress had lost the 1989 general election. He now claims it was Buta Singh's idea and that he stalled it! What he has not mentioned is that after failing to call out the Army in Delhi, he rushed a message to V.P. Singh that he was willing to accept him as his new master and do his bidding.

As governor of Tripura he tried his best to destabilise and dislodge the Left Front government and install himself as the state's arbiter. The CPI(M) promptly went on the offensive and demanded his recall. Banners went up all over Agartala, adorned with the single slogan, "Bhandari Go Back". He had to be finally shunted out to Goa. In the book, Bhandari says that he and the CPI(M) were on the best of terms!

Like all those who belong to the too-clever-by-half species, he is glib. He had no dealings with Chandraswami, he says: he merely "liked him as a human being". Relations between him and the crook were, he says, "only of a personal character". Adnan Khashoggi? Bhandari had a chance encounter with him in New York when Rajiv Gandhi was PM and promptly invited the notorious armsdealer to his son's wedding. Guess what? Khashoggi turned up at the wedding. The casual New York encounter ended with Bhandari's son spending his honeymoon partying on Khashoggi's yacht.

Bhandari and his political masters in Delhi (Deve Gowda and Mulayam Singh Yadav) decided to reimpose President's rule in Uttar Pradesh rather than invite the BJP, which had emerged as the largest single party after the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, "after very mature thought". It is just that a three-judge bench of Allahabad High Court set aside the proclamation was based on "colourable exercise of powers" and extraneous, mala fide and wholly irrelevant grounds. What Bhandari means is that the courts are not as clever as him.

He counselled Mayawati to withdraw support to Kalyan Singh. And after she did, he did not want to give Kalyan an opportunity to seek a confidence vote on the floor of the assembly as he was convinced that given a chance, Kalyan would prove his majority! And that would be disastrous for UP, India, democracy and, of course, Mulayam, though not in the same sequence.

On February 21, 1998, he sacked Kalyan on the eve of the second round of polling during the general election, ostensibly because Kalyan had lost his majority. Everybody knows that he was one of the conspirators who planned the defections. Kalyan, of course, proved his majority. Mulayam may have won his seat where polling was held during the second round, but the BJP won more seats in UP. With enemies like Bhandari, the BJP doesn't need friends.

Bhandari, of course, has defended his action: "The night that the dismissal of the Kalyan government was announced, there was great rejoicing amongst all those opposed to the BJP. I received calls from Muslims from Dubai...." And all this happened while people in Lucknow, in a spontaneous display of solidarity, poured out into the streets upon hearing that Atal Behari Vajpayee had gone on an indefinite fast to protest against Bhandari's patently unconstitutional act to favour the anti-BJP parties.

The self-proclaimed "hero" of Uttar Pradesh that he portrays himself to be, Bhandari, of course, did not have the guts to stay on in office after the verdict of the 1998 general election was known. This is the man who brought disgrace to the governor's office, not once but thrice. This is the man who converted Raj Bhawans into extension counters of the ruling party of the day. Let there be no mistake. He would have happily shafted Mulayam Singh Yadav, or, for that matter, any of the politicians he has served in his lifetime, if the BJP had provided him with political patronage. But, as I said in the beginning, Bhan-dari is too-clever-by-half.

A last word. For somebody who went to Trinity College, served in the IFS, plays golf and whose grandfather "had retired as Postmaster General during the British times", Bhandari's command over the English language equals that of shopkeepers in Karol Bagh.