6 November 2002

TEHELKA PANEL CHAIRMAN KNOWS HOW TO GRAB BEST OF THE WORLD

From Jal Khambata

NEW DELHI: Tehelka Inquiry Commission Chairman Justice K Venkataswamy, a retired Supreme Court judge, has in his pocket the chairmanship of yet another Commission even before he finishes the present work in hand and he has already requisitioned a brand new airconditioned car to go with his new job.

He knows how to grab best of the world, securing postings and perks that suit a retired judge. He already has an Ambassador car allotted to him as the chairman of the Tehelka Commission but he is now insisting on the second car allotted to him by the Finance Ministry, specifying that it should be a new Maruti Esteem Delux airconditioned car.

The Tehelka Inquiry may not come to an end for long the way Justice Venkataswamy is handling it, even though he assumes on December 10 chairmanship of the Authority for Advance Rulings (AAR) on Customs and income tax, an authority created under a Supreme Court ruling in 1996 to give binding rulings on the question of law and facts instead of the litigants rushing to the court.

It will be nothing new for Justice Venkataswamy to handle two jobs simultaneously. In fact, he has been commuting between Delhi and Chennai all these months to attend to his present twin assignments.

Simultaneous to the Tehelka inquiry, he has been also heading the Southern Railway Claims and Disputes Tribunal, headquartered in Chennai. His term with this Tribunal is coming to an end on November 15. He used to fly to Chennai every week for the Tribunal sittings held on Thursdays and as such he will be in Chennai also on November 7 to preside over the last but one sitting.

At the last sitting of the Tehelka Inquiry Commission, Justice Venkataswamy had announced that he would be re-examining five key witnesses. His court room in the Vigyan Bhawan was, however, occupied by the secretariat of the international environment conference and hence he would be able to resume hearing only in the third week of November.

The Government, however, does not want the Tehelka Commission to go on for ever and in fact the orders were issued on October 15 appointing him as chairman of the 3-member Authority for Advance Rulings, a statutory body, on the assumption that he would be free from the Tehelka inquiry shortly since the hearing had concluded. Venkataswamy's decision to re-examine five key witnesses came as a surprise to the government.

Justice Venkataswamy was chosen for the new post on account of the mastery he displayed in quickly grasping relevant information regarding foreign exchange and revenue matters from the load of documents that the Government had dumped on the Tehelka Commission to fix broker-fiancier Shankar Sharma and the Global Trust which owns the Tehelka website company.

Ms Laxmi Sharma, commissioner of the Authority, is understood to haves shot out a letter to Union Revenue Secretary C S Rao, pointing out that Justice Venkataswamy desires the new airconditioned Maruti Esteem Delux car. In her letter to Rao, Ms Sharma has pointed out that Justice Venkataswamy shall be assuming the new charge on December 10 and hence the car should be procured for him before that date.

He has to take over from Justice (retd) S C Sen who is retiring on December 5. Justice Ranganathan, also a retired Supreme Court judge, was the first chairman of the Authority. The Government is yet to appoint two other members of the ARC, which was created specifically to help out the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) caught in time-consuming litigations in the matter of the income-tax assessments.

Meanwhile, even in the Tehelka Commission, Justice Venkataswamy had his say in appointment of the new officer on special duty (OSD) following death of Rama Rao. The Government wanted to depute an officer to the Commission but Justice Venkataswamy refused to accept anybody else except the man of his choice. Orders were finally issued on November 1, appointing Kadirvelu, a Chennai lawyer as the new OSD. Kadirvelu is reported to be a relation of Justice Venkataswamy. END