Lucknow: Dr Rajiv Tyagi of the Tyagi troika — who are in the spotlight for the AgustaWestland chopper scam — had once tried to broker truce between Muslim leaders angry over the Babri demolition and the BJP government at the Centre. He even assisted Amitabh Bachchan when the movie legend successfully contested Lok Sabha election from Allahabad in 1984.
Babri activists in the city still remember Tyagi who introduced himself as Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s representative in the former prime minister’s parliamentary constituency of Lucknow. Tyagi got in touch with quite a few Muslim clerics and leaders who were active on the Ayodhya issue, offering to arrange a meeting with the PM for a negotiated settlement to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janambhoomi tangle.
“Yes, he did approach me twice when Vajpayee was prime minister. He offered to fix a meeting with the PM, if needed, to work out a solution to the vexed Babri Masjid issue,” Zafaryab Jilani, senior high court lawyer and convener of the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, told TOI on Friday. “But we were very clear about it and I told him that there was no point in talking on the issue because we were never ready to settle for anything other than a court order or rebuilding of the mosque where it existed,” Jilani added.
Asked about the channel through which Tyagi approached him, Jilani said, “As far as I can remember, they were people from Ayodhya who were known to me for quite some time by then. They had accompanied him to meet me in my chamber.”
Some close associates of Tyagi, who spoke to TOIon the condition of anonymity, said they were privy to his meeting with Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Sadiq, and his invitation to him for a meeting with Vajpayee. “If it is about meeting the PM, then it must have happened more than 10 years ago. I don’t remember exactly if I had met anyone by that name then,” Maulana Kalbe Sadiq said.
Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya has also been reported as remembering Tyagi as someone whom he would bump into in the office of Vajpayee’s trusted lieutenant in Lucknow, Lalj Tandon, a senior BJP leader who now represents the city in Lok Sabha.
However, when contacted, Tandon denied knowing any particular Dr Rajiv Tyagi. “Scores of doctors, Rajivs and Tyagis have been visiting my office for decades now. I don't know which one you are talking about,” Tandon told TOI. Asked about Ranjan's reported statement, Tandon maintained, “But I don't remember having met any particular Dr Rajiv Tyagi.”
However, some old friends of Tyagi, his first contacts in Lucknow, do remember him as a politically well-connected man. One of them recollected how he used to stay in a top hotel near Shahnajaf Imambara and later stayed at the executive guest house on Parag Narain Road in Hazratganj.
“He used to talk big and the fact that he was getting in touch with Muslim clerics and community leaders and even arranging their meeting with the PM was proof enough of his connections,” said a one-time friend of Tyagi in Lucknow.
“Actually, Dr Rajiv’s political links with Uttar Pradesh date back to the early 1980s when he visited Allahabad when cine star Amitabh Bachchan was contesting the Lok Sabha polls from there,” he said. “Then he got active in Lucknow once again during Vajpayee's regime as PM,” he said.
Political circles in Delhi recall Tyagi as very active on the political circuit in the 1980s. “He would spend hours at Taj Mansingh’s Emperor’s Lounge, meeting people and sharing his take on politics. Sometimes, he was off the mark by miles. For instance, he went awfully wrong on the success of V P Singh,” a senior leader remembered.
COURTESY:
Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui TNN
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