Atal Bihari Vajpayee

You know, this BLO thing that they say, you don't have BLO, or you put BLOs.

This was only in Vajpayee government.

Before that, there were no BLOs.

Yeah.

So why would Indian defense leverage be the best tool, right? When going ahead, I mean, one can't say if the American courts and American companies themselves might reverse this decision in some way, right? So should we use the leverage or should we wait out to see how it plays out?

So the examples of, you know, 2003... and as far as 2003 was concerned, is that the Vajpayee government refused to send troops to Iraq when, you know, George Bush asked for it.

And remember, this was a time when the US and India were negotiating for signing the US-India nuclear deal.

So the US-India nuclear deal was something which the US wanted, but India also desperately wanted.

But notwithstanding that, Prime Minister Vajpayee He orchestrated the issue along with the opposition in such a way that the deployment was opposed in our Lok Sabha.

So therefore, that's how he turned

down

Which means, in a way, you wanted to stop the Mhadai flow into Goa at all.

That is where Goa government had serious issues, and Parrikar was the first chief minister who took it up very seriously, took all party delegation because central gave clearance, and Prime Minister Vajpayee, after hearing Manohar Parrikar and those people who had gone with him, stayed the clearance, put it in abeyance, and referred the dispute to tribunal.

Before tribunal, we fought it out.

Okay? To the best of our ability and efforts, we did it.

Meanwhile, UTI went through lots of troubles.

As some of you might remember, there was a meltdown because of many bad loans and some alleged corruption, after which the Vajpayee government restructured UTI.

In that process, the bank became more autonomous.

This is the bank that then became fully private, and by 2007, it acquired a new name.

Both are professional, but of late Delhi Police has been seen as, again, it's a matter of perception, to, you know, please the political masters.

And whenever you try to please political masters, which can be whether it was Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi or, you know, Vajpayee-ji or this government, you always you blunder because as long as you're professional, and I would say that lot about the same, uh, you know, thing about various institutions including the Election Commission.

So as long as you are, you know, quasi-professional or you're professional, you're good.

Hmm.

So every time there is a new election for the same participant, performance, and, uh, Nissala was making a point, you also said about, you know, Sheila Dikshit, performance is not a guarantor.

You look at, uh, Jaganmohan, you look at, uh, Naveen Patnaik, and you look at, of course, uh, Sheila Dikshit.

You look at Vajpayee of 2004.

Ha.

When I was in, I worked with like Times of India, Economic Times, I still remember minister used to ask for cartoons.

I was in India today, even when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was prime minister.

So we got a request from PMO saying send off some of your cartoons.

We want to create a website for PMO and we want to carry cartoons.

He laughed and said Najib had got impatient with his, the ambassador's skepticism as he, the ambassador Nambiar, suspected, with good reason, that not, not all the money demanded would be used to buy arms, and some might be siphoned off, and was gracious enough to say that I did the right thing.

Much later, on the other hand, I got caught in another set of circumstances in setting up the Lahore bus ride for Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his summit meeting with Nawaz Sharif.

This brought me the wrath of the warriors of the IFS, who said I was sabotaging their Pakistan policy, obviously in cahoots with who else but their Prime Minister, Vajpayee.

And that seeded the thought for the column, The Indian Fossil-Fossil Service.

There is much else shared, all pleasant, if sometimes too adventurous between me and my IFS friends.

The last one was two thousand two, two thousand three.

That was the Vajpayee era.

So carrying out an SIR is not illegal.

Second, even the Supreme Court has said that SIR is not illegal.