It gets ugly, it gets personal & the Modi is keeping mum

Radhika Ramaseshan, TT, New Delhi, June 15: A cacophony of personal attacks and innuendoes filled the communication vacuum in the government and the BJP today as the Sushma Swaraj controversy raged on and the ruling establishment counted the costs and benefits of sticking by her.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi busy with events ranging from a book release to a meeting on tribal welfare, gadflies like Kirti Azad, a former cricketer and three-time BJP member of Parliament, padded up and made hay.

In a string of tweets and retweets, Azad spoke darkly of an " asteen ka saamp" (betrayer) "conspiring" with news channel Times Now's editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami to tarnish BJP leaders. "Guess the snake?" Azad asked in a tweet with the hashtag #IstandWithSushmaSwaraj.

The Darbhanga MP subsequently retweeted an answer: "You and I know who is the person from within the family who did the work."

Later in the day, Azad tweeted again: "@LalitKModi being probed by #ED. Who were d members of #BCCI #EC who approved #IPL IN #SA, Shd they 2 not be probed? What say @arunjaitley."

Neither Jaitley nor Goswami, who was broadcasting from the television studio till late tonight, could be contacted by this newspaper for comment.

The BJP MP has had a running feud for years with Jaitley but the party has been tolerating Azad only because he won his seat thrice in a row.

Sushma, the foreign minister who is at the centre of the storm for overturning the stated government policy and telling the UK that the country would have no objections if travel documents were issued to Lalit Modi, too, singled out a journalist to launch an uncharacteristic attack.

"Look who is preaching propriety - of all the persons Navika Kumar!" Sushma tweeted without elaborating.

Navika Kumar, who too works for Times Now, told this newspaper in response to a question: "Why should I react? It is for the foreign minister to react."

Lalit Modi did not help the matter quieten down. He thundered from London - in his characteristic style - that "this is war" and threatened to implicate the "erstwhile PMO".

In a series of tweets Lalit said he would make disclosures, which he termed "bombshells", that would implicate the "erstwhile PMO".

"Congress party should be watching this.... So should all who have jumped up and down in last few years," he said in a tweet.

"Lastly, before I board another flight to another beautiful destination: this is war. So bring it on. I choose to lose a battle to win a war," Lalit said in another tweet. "Wrong people's resignations are being asked. I can assure u now the storm is about to hit. Lots more resignations will be.... Now finally it's my turn to get EVERYTHING OUT. THERE ARE MANY BOMBSHELLS."

A notable person to back Sushma was her old ally Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister.

Chouhan described Sushma's life as an "epitome of transparency and probity in public service".

Sources "privy" to the Prime Minister's thinking maintained that he liked nothing more than a "good political slugfest". He saw such a fight playing out in the Congress's "harangue" against Sushma and him, and he was not known to "buckle" and "react" under political pressure, the sources said.

"Had she herself offered to resign (on Sunday), he may have considered her offer. But if the political heat intensifies, he is not the one who will capitulate. He never did it in Gujarat," a source said.

The source cited the example of Gujarat minister Babu Bokhariya, who stayed on in the then Modi government despite his conviction by a magistrate's court. A year later, he was acquitted by a higher court.

When Amit Shah, now BJP president, was embroiled in criminal cases in Gujarat, Modi kept him on as home minister until the CBI charged Shah with kidnapping and murder.

However, the sources took care to say that Sushma had unilaterally intervened with the British government on Lalit's behalf. "The PMO was not in the know. Had Sushmaji spoken to the Prime Minister, he would have stopped her," one of the sources said.

The government also tried to address criticism that it had not done anything about the Lalit probe by suggesting that the Enforcement Directorate was in the process of serving final penalty notices on Lalit. 

The BJP feels that the Congress's "tirade" might not endure because of the backing Sushma has marshalled from other key Opposition leaders.

Sources claimed that by the time Parliament convened for the monsoon session in July, the Congress could find itself "isolated".

The RSS's sole interest in having Sushma retained has been that her presence lends "weight" to a subterranean alliance against a Modi-Shah duo bolstered by Jaitley. Sources said the Sangh saw Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari as the other links in this chain that, it feared, would "weaken" without Sushma.

But there is also a view that "defending" someone like Lalit does "no good" to the image of the BJP, the government and Narendra Modi.