Sonia Gandhi is an Indian politician. She is the longest-serving president of the Indian National Congress, a social democratic political party, which has governed India for most of its post-independence history. She took over as the party leader in 1998, seven years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, her husband and a former Prime Minister of India, and remained in office until 2017 after serving for twenty-two years. She returned to the post in 2019 and remained the President for another three years.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is the domestic crime investigating agency of India. It operates under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions. Originally set up to investigate bribery and governmental corruption, in 1965 it received expanded jurisdiction to investigate breaches of central laws enforceable by the Government of India, multi-state organised crime, multi-agency or international cases. The agency has been known to investigate several economic crimes, special crimes, cases of corruption and other cases. CBI is exempted from the provisions of the Right to Information Act. CBI is India's officially designated single point of contact for liaison with the Interpol.
The Bofors scandal was a major weapons-contract political scandal that occurred between India and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Indian National Congress politicians and implicating the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and several other members of the Indian and Swedish governments, who were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB, an arms manufacturer principally financed by the Wallenberg family's Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, for winning a bid to supply to India their 155 mm field howitzer. The scandal relates to illegal kickbacks paid in a US $1.4 billion deal between the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors with the government of India for the sale of 410 field howitzers, and a supply contract almost twice that amount. It was the biggest arms deal ever in Sweden, and money marked for development projects was diverted to secure this contract at any cost. The investigations revealed flouting of rules and bypassing of institutions.
The Attorney General for India is the chief legal advisor of the Government of India. The attorney general is appointed by the President of India at the instance of the Union Cabinet under Article 76(1) of the Constitution and hold office during the pleasure of the President. The Attorney General must meet the qualifications necessary for an appointment as a Judge of the Supreme Court. Therefore, the Attorney General should have served as a judge in a high court for a minimum of five years, or as an advocate in a high court for at least ten years. Alternatively, the President may consider an individual as eligible for the role if they are deemed an eminent jurist.
Ottavio Quattrocchi was an Italian businessman who was being sought until early 2009 in India for criminal charges for acting as a conduit for bribes in the Bofors scandal. Quattrocchi's role in this scandal, and his proximity to Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi through his wife Sonia Gandhi, is thought to have contributed to the defeat of the Congress Party in the 1989 elections. In 1999, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) named Quattrocchi in a chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe. The case against him was strengthened in June 2003, when Interpol revealed two bank accounts, 5A5151516M and 5A5151516L, held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank, London, containing Euros 3 million and $1 million, a "curiously large savings for a salaried executive". In January 2006, these frozen bank accounts were unexpectedly released by India's law ministry, apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.
Om Prakash Chautala is an Indian politician who has served as the 7th Chief Minister of Haryana from Indian National Lok Dal. He is the son of 6th Deputy Prime Minister of India, Chaudhary Devi Lal.
Subramanian Swamy is an Indian politician, economist and conspiracy theorist. Before joining politics, he was a professor of Mathematical Economics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is known for his Hindu nationalist views. Swamy was a member of the Planning Commission of India and was a Cabinet Minister in the Chandra Shekhar government. Between 1994 and 1996, Swamy was Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade under former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Swamy was a long-time member of the Janata Party, serving as its president until 2013 when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has written on foreign affairs of India dealing largely with China, Pakistan and Israel. He was nominated to Rajya Sabha on 26 April 2016 for a six-year term, ending on 24 April 2022.
Hansraj Bhardwaj was an Indian politician who was Governor of Karnataka from 2009 to 2014; he also served as Governor of Kerala from 2012 until 2013. He was a member of the Indian National Congress. He holds the record of having the second longest tenure in Law Ministry since independence, after Ashoke Kumar Sen. He was the minister of state for nine years and a cabinet minister for law and justice for five years. At the end of his five-year term in 2014, Governor of Tamil Nadu, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Konijeti Rosaiah replaced Bharadwaj as Governor of Karnataka.
Sheila Kaul was a social democratic leader of the Indian National Congress, a politician, cabinet minister and governor, and the oldest living former member of parliament in India at the time of her death. She was also an educator, social worker, and social reformer in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and an independence activist in British India. She was Jawaharlal Nehru's sister-in-law and Indira Gandhi's maternal aunt.
The Taj Heritage Corridor case is an alleged scam wherein 2002–2003, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati and a minister in her government, Nasimuddin Siddiqui, were charged with corruption. The Taj Corridor project was intended to upgrade tourist facilities near the Taj Mahal and was to be implemented during her tenure as Chief Minister. The then BJP government at the Centre gave the Environmental Clearance required for the project near Taj Mahal. However, later on the BJP backed out and then started saying that the project was not cleared by the Environment Ministry and blamed Mayawati for starting construction work near the Taj Mahal.
Prashant Bhushan is an Indian public interest lawyer in the Supreme Court of India. He was a member of the faction of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement known as Team Anna which supported Anna Hazare's campaign for the implementation of the Jan Lokpal Bill. After a split in IAC, he helped Team Anna form the Aam Aadmi Party. In 2015, he made several allegations against the party's leadership, its functioning and its deviation from the core ideology, values and commitments. He is one of the founders of Swaraj Abhiyan and Sambhaavnaa, an Institute of Public Policy and Politics.
Milon Kumar Banerji was an Indian jurist who was Attorney General of India from 1992 to 1996 and again from 2004 to 2009. He was also Solicitor General from 1986 to 1989. He died on 20 July 2010 after a long illness, having suffered a stroke in December 2009. He was 82.
The 2G spectrum case was a political controversy in which politicians and private officials of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government India were allegedly involved in selling or allotting 122 2G spectrum licenses on conditions that provided an advantage to specific telecom operators. A. Raja, then Telecom Minister, was accused of selling 2G spectrum licenses at a very low cost which resulted in the loss of ₹1,760 billion in government revenue. Raja was also accused of not following rules and regulations as well as not recognizing any advice from the Ministries of Finance and Law and Justice of India while allotting 2G spectrum licenses to telecom operators. Series of allegations were made on allotting 2G spectrum licenses including allegations from Central Bureau of Investigation after investigating the case alleging Raja for intentionally advancing the cut-off date to favour some specific firms, which were allegedly ineligible for applying for telecom licenses, in return for bribes.
Uttar Pradesh food grain scam took place between years 2002 and 2010, in Uttar Pradesh state in India, wherein food grain worth ₹350 billion (US$4.4 billion), meant to be distributed amongst the poor, through Public Distribution System (PDS) and other welfare schemes like Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), Jawahar Rozgar Yojana and Midday Meal Scheme for Below Poverty Line (BPL) card holders, was diverted to the open market. Some of it was traced to the Nepal and Bangladesh borders, as in 2010 security forces seized Rs 11.7 million worth of foodgrains like paddy and pulses being smuggled to Nepal, another Rs 6062,000 worth of grains were confiscated on the Indo-Bangladesh border.
The Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election followed as a result the expiration of the five-year term of the previous legislature elected in Uttar Pradesh, India. The election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly was held in seven phases from 8 February through 3 March 2012. Uttar Pradesh has the world's largest population for a sub-national democracy. The incumbent chief minister Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party, which previously won an absolute majority of seats, was defeated by Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, which gained an absolute majority in the election. Mulayam's son and Samajwadi party president Akhilesh Yadav was nominated as chief minister by the party.
The coal allocation scam, dubbed in the media as Coalgate, is a major political scandal concerning the Indian government's allocation of the nation's coal deposits to public sector enterprise (PSEs) and private companies. In a draft report issued in March 2012, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) office accused the Government of India of allocating coal blocks in an inefficient manner during the period 2004–2009. Over the summer of 2012, resulting in a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into whether the allocation of the coal blocks was in fact influenced by corruption.
Also referred to as the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal, the Indian helicopter bribery scandal by Congress led UPA Government refers to a multimillion-dollar corruption case in India, wherein money was paid to middlemen and Indian officials in 2006 and 2007 to purchase helicopters for high level politicians. As per the CBI, this amounted to ₹2.5 billion (US$31 million), transferred through bank accounts in the UK and UAE.
AJL-National Herald Panchkula land grab scam case, allegedly against Bhupinder Singh Hooda currently in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, is under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED). This case pertains to Hooda's alleged role for misusing his position as then Chief Minister of Haryana to cause wrongful gains to the Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and corresponding loss to the Government of Haryana, by illegally allotting a government plot of land worth several crores rupees (billions) to AJL for INR 59 lakh. Then Chief Minister, Hooda, was also the chairman of HUDA, a government entity which re-allotted the plot to AJL in 2005 in violations of rules and against the advice of the HUDA officials. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar's BJP government of Haryana transferred the case to CBI, and CBI filed the FIR in April 2016. CBI booked Hooda for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating and misuse of official position by public servants. AJL, which also owns National Herald, is controlled by the Indian National Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi among others.
Haryana Forestry scam case is a multi-crore fake plantation scam allegedly involving Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kiran Chaudhary and others where government money was embezzled. In 2009, this scam was exposed by the whistleblower, Sanjiv Chaturvedi, Ramon Magsaysay Award-winner Indian Forest Service officer with then Government of Haryana, who filed a case in September 2012 to seek Supreme Court's instructions to CBI to investigate the case. Earlier, Haryana Government had suspended him in 2007 for acting against illegal felling of trees and poaching in Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary, but his suspension was revoked by the President in 2008 and the chargesheet was overturned in 2011 on an appeal against the decision of Haryana government. An inquiry committee of the Ministry of Environment & Forest (MoEF) found Chaturvedi's allegations against Haryana government true, preferred an inquiry by Central Vigilance Commission and by CBI into dubious role of certain highly placed politicians and civil servants. CBI, in its reply to CVC, found Chaturvedi's allegations against then Haryana Government creditable enough for an independent inquiry. As per the rules, CBI can not undertake suo motu investigation, only state government, high court or supreme court can ask CBI for it.
