Column

We’re only talking sting these days in Delhi. We have little choice, given that we’re subjected to a daily dose of Amar Singh’s streams of consciousness in front of TV cameras. His frequent media appearances — seven in less than a fortnight, at the last count — have been extremely revealing.

Whether he realises it or not, he’s given away valuable details about the sordid phone tapping controversy engulfing him. One, he’s more or less confessed to talking dirty—flirting with different moral standards, he called it — with certain Bollywood actresses. Two, he’s been visibly defensive about some business deals he’s conducted over the hot phone. Three, he’s virtually admitted that he’s been taken for a ride through his best friend’s company.

The irony of the situation should not be missed. The phone that was being tapped by a two-bit private detective agency was an unlisted number provided by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infocomm.

Ambani is supposed to have “gifted” Singh four phones for off-record dealings that the Samajwadi leader clearly didn’t want the government to access through the usual methods of intelligence surveillance. He got trapped anyway, despite these elaborate precautions, by an obviously forged letter authorising a tap on one of his secret numbers.

The buzz in political circles says that Singh’s Reliance phone was under surveillance for over two months before he got wind of it. It’s not clear how he found out. Three theories are doing the rounds. One says he was given the bad news after papers approving the tap were unearthed during a routine internal check by the company.

Another claims it was discovered when an employee of the detective agency tried to blackmail Singh on the side. The third theory is that an official in the government’s intelligence setup tipped him off after a couple of tapes reached the agency.
* * *
Singh’s single biggest concern now is to find out who has the tapes. According to the political grapevine, there are 20 hours of tapes containing conversations with Bollywood stars, businessmen and political leaders.

These are clearly not innocent conversations, otherwise Singh wouldn’t have raised such a storm. The extent of the worry in the Samajwadi camp can be gauged from the fact that the normally media-shy party chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, addressed two press conferences on the issue in five days, including one in Delhi. He usually keeps the Capital’s press at arms length.
* * *
It’s giving the Congress great pleasure to watch the duo twisting and turning to find a way out of the web in which they’ve found themselves entangled. There’s no love lost between the two parties and if it weren’t for the Left’s veto, the Congress would have destabilised Mulayam’s government in Uttar Pradesh a long time ago.

But the battle promises to get dirty. Singh has gone for broke by targeting Sonia and he’s roping in various forces inimical to her. He was spied having lunch with Subramaniam Swamy in the Chinese room of a five-star hotel earlier in the week. They make an odd couple, except that they share a virulent dislike for Sonia. The news shook 10 Janpath because it’s after this lunch that the Congress broke its silence and hit out at Singh.
Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net