Why everybody loves to hate Palaniappan Chidambaram

What is it about Palaniappan Chidambaram that few people want to stand up for him? The Prime Minister did not want him as finance minister in UPA-1, but was forced to accept him at the insistence of 10 Janpath. Manmohan Singh got rid of him only after the 26/11 terror attacks, when the ineffectual Shivraj Patil had to be replaced as home minister, giving Singh a good  excuse to push Chidambaram from finance to home. Pranab Mukherjee, who stepped into his shoes, was never too unwilling to push the knife in. After the 2G scam, it was a finance ministry note, albeit prepared at the instance of the PMO, that got Chidambaram in the eye of the storm. The note said Chidambaram could have stopped A Raja from selling spectrum at throwaway prices if he wanted to. This happened when Sonia Gandhi was away, and the two buried the hatchet only when Sonia stepped in. [caption id=“attachment_335830” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Aiyar did not join the hate-Chidambaram club recently. He was one of its founding fathers. AFP”]  [/caption] Last year, when the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scam involving Suresh Kalmadi was hitting the headlines, former Sports Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar claimed Chidambaram did not act when he had brought instances of egregious CWG spending to his notice. But as Firstpost noted last year, Aiyar did not join the hate-Chidambaram club recently. He was one of its founding fathers. As far back as 1996, Aiyar bashed Chidambaram as the “most incompetent Minister of State for Internal Security (in 1986-89, as part of Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet) and most negligent as minister in charge of the investigation into Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination from May 24, 1995, till his defection to the TMC (Tamil Manila Congress) on April Fool’s Day, 1996.” Maverick Congress General secretary Digvijaya Singh blasted Chidambaram’s anti-Maoist strategy as “sectarian”. In an article written for a newspaper in 2010, Singh wrote: “I have been a victim of his (Chidambaram’s) intellectual arrogance many times.” Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy tried to get the 2G trial court to add him as a co-accused along with A Raja, but failed. He is now trying his luck in the Supreme Court. Swamy also alleged that Chidambaram helped his son Karti benefit from the Aircel-Maxis deal. The BJP never had any love lost for Chidambaram, having walked out and boycotted him in parliament many times over the last one year. The Murli Manohar Joshi-led Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also had pointed criticism for Chidambaram in the 2G scam. The PAC wondered why Chidambaram, just a week after Raja issued licences in a questionable manner, changed his stand and wanted the matter closed. The committee, was “shocked and dismayed to note that the Finance Minister, in his note dated 15 January, 2008, acknowledged that spectrum is a scarce resource and the price of spectrum should be based on its scarcity value and efficiency of usage, but made a unique and condescending suggestion that the matter be treated as closed,” it said. In July last year, former NDA Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into Chidambaram’s role in the 2G scam. “As finance minister, Chidambaram has been as deeply involved in 2G spectrum as A Raja and Kanimozhi (DMK chief Karunanidhi’s daughter, who was given bail last year), and unless his role is also probed by the CBI in the manner it has been done in the case of others, the enquiry would not reach its logical end,” Sinha said. As for Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, she had always had it in for him. Soon after her party returned to power last year, she demanded Chidambaram’s resignation because, according to her, he had not won his election fairly in 2009. Speaking to newspersons around mid-June 2011 in Delhi, Jayalalithaa launched a scathing attack on Chidambaram saying he wouldn’t have won from Sivaganga in 2009 if a data entry operator in the constituency had not reversed the votes going for the AIADMK candidate in favour of Chidambaram. A stung Chidambaram fumed about it all being contempt of court, but those watching the election results of May 2009 were surprised that Chidambaram, who was trailing all the while, was suddenly declared winner in the end by a slim margin. Chidambaram is in many people’s bad books for one major reason: his alleged arrogance. He is widely seen by all people who have interacted with him -  businessmen, bureaucrats, and party colleagues— as arrogant and peremptory with people who disagree with him. As finance minister, he suddenly walked out of a TV interview when he was asked tough questions about his budget arithmetic. Last month, Mamata Banerjee was widely pilloried for walking out of a TV show when she was put tough questions from the audience. But Chidambaram was the original walkout man. Now, with the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court ruling on Thursday that he should stand trial in the 2009 election petition filed by AIADMK politician, Chidambaram’s detractors have one more reason to say “We-told-you-so.”