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This is a complete synopsis of the cement scam, noticed there wasnt much online.
CEMENT SCAM OF 1981
A loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Abdul Rehman Antulay, also known as Barrister Antulay, who hails from Shrivardhan in Konkan, became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 1980. Even as he was the chief minister, he floated and headed a trust called Indira Gandhi Pratishthan.
In those days (In 1981 to be precise), cement was a scarce (in short supply) commodity. So its distribution and allotment was controlled by the government. Builders who needed cement for construction work, could only obtain it from the state government under the control system. It meant that no one could buy cement in an open market. According to this system, cement was allotted or distributed to the builders equally. However, Antulay abused his position as the chief minister. He used his influence as the CM and asked builders to donate handsomely to his trust (Pratishthan). In return, he bent the rules and violated guidelines to favour some builders with more cement quota than they were eligible for.
Antulay was charged with malpractices and favouritism in giving cement meant for public consumption to private builders.
Antulay is believed to have collected Rs 30 crore for his trust by way of such donations from the builders who he favoured with supplying more and out-of-turn cement.
The scam came to light because of the then executive editor of the Indian Express Arun Shourie, who ran a series of exposes on how Antulay misused his authority in allotting cement to builders by violating guidelines. Sequel to the exposes, a petition was filed in the Bombay High Court against Antulay.
Justice Bakhtavar Lentin of the High Court found Antulay guilty of corruption and abuse of authority. Under public pressure, Antulay resigned, but he appealed against his conviction. Meanwhile, acting suo motu (on his own), the Governor of Maharashtra gave permission for the prosecution of Antulay under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Antulay not only lost his job as chief minister, he was also thrown into political wilderness for over 12 years. Later, he was given a clean chit by the Supreme Court, but Antulay was not only out of power, he was also out of people’s mind.
The Indian Express, which exposed the scandal, became a big hit with the public and its circulation really went zooming up.
Cement Scam:
Antulay Trust(1981): Antulay Trust(1981) AR Antulay had garnered Rs 30 crore from businesses dependent on state resources like cement, and kept the money in a private trust.
The court ruled that Antulay had illegally required Mumbai area builders to make donations to Indira Gandhi Pristhan trust, one of several trust funds he had established and controlled, in exchange for receiving more cement than the quota allotted to them by the Government.
He was forced to resign as Chief Minister of Maharashtra after the Bombay High Court convicted him of extortion on January 13, 1982. The court ruled that Antulay had illegally required Bombay area builders to make donations to Indira Gandhi Pristhan trust, one of several trust funds he had established and controlled, in exchange for receiving more cement than the quota allotted to them by the Government.
With the exposure of this scandal concerning A.R. Antulay, then the chief minister of Maharashtra, The Indian Express was reborn.
In the early 1980s, the Indian Express launched a campaign against the corruption of the then Chief Minister AR Antulay. That became known as the Cement Scam. It eventually led to the resignation of Antulay and had Prime Minister Indira Gandhi squirming in her seat. Owner Ramnath Goenka was under so much pressure after that expose that he had to sack editor Arun Shourie in the end.
---x-x-x-x
But hold your breath. Around the time S Nihal Singh unabashedly expressed his opinions about Arun Shourie’s credentials as a journalist and an editor in his autobiography titled Ink in My Veins, another well known and equally respected senior journalist, Vinod Mehta, also came up with an autobiography called Lucknow Boys. In this interesting book, Mehta digs up an old letter written by the now Chief Editor of Divya Marathi, Kumar Ketkar. This was when Mehta was the editor of The Sunday Observer, and Shourie had acquired a halo for exposing the alleged corruption of then Maharashtra Chief Minister, A R Antulay, in the then notorious cement scam in The Indian Express. Ketkar, who was a young and outspoken journalist in those days wrote: “Free from any constraint of veracity, Shourie is always able to provide exclusive stories.”
---c—c-c-c-c
Arun Shourie:
Shoma Chaudhury, the executive editor of Tehelka, does a much-required re-examination of Arun Shourie, the former editor of the Indian Express, who occupies an “adumbral position between liberal knight, self-righteous crusader and unselfconscious fascist”, in the context of a recent interview with his protege, Shekhar Gupta.
“Shourie joined the Indian Express as executive editor in January 1979 and over four blistering years of journalism, passed into media legend. Shourie rarely did the groundwork himself; his gift lay in creating moral frameworks and meticulous backgrounds–building stories into campaigns.
“The infamous Bhagalpur blinding case; the advocacy for the rights of undertrials; the buying of Kamala; the Antulay cement scam; the infamous Gundu Rao interview; the defeat of the Defamation Bill; and finally, the Kuo Oil scam. The Congress had come to symbolise corruption and anti-democratic practices: The Indian Express—and its most public face, the Goenka- Shourie duo—became the epitome of the fight against these mutilations.
“In 1982, with hundreds of cases against the paper, and allegedly under severe pressure from Indira Gandhi, Ramnath Goenka suddenly sacked Shourie. In 1987, with all his old warhorses gone or fading, he suddenly wanted him back and used Suman Dubey, Shourie’s brother-in-law, then editor of the paper and a friend of Rajiv Gandhi, to woo him back. A few months later, the Bofors scandal broke.
“More actinic years of journalism followed: the Bofors campaign and the campaign against Dhirubhai Ambani’s corruptions being the most high-profile. In 1990, Shourie was sacked again – unceremoniously, via teleprinter. There were cascading reasons: disagreements on reservations, the Mandal Commission, V.P. Singh’s handling of the Ayodhya movement and Goenka’s sense that Shourie was no longer in his control.
“At any rate, Shourie’s years as an editor shone with inspiration: he was a lighthouse in a dark time. As his Magasaysay Award citation says, “He used his pen as an effective adversary of corruption, inequality and injustice.” He fought for civil liberties and the rule of law; he had an appetite for the big battles.
“Yet, even at the height of his defence of liberal values in public life, disappointingly, Shourie’s professional peers and juniors say that in person, he was an intolerant, abusive and dictatorial man, incapable of democratic dialogue. The archetypal god with clay feet. Stories—unfortunately all of them off-the-record—abound: how he fought and slighted co-editors, S. Mulgaonkar, B.G. Verghese, Nihal Singh, Kuldip Nayar; how he ousted Suman Dubey; how he ravaged juniors.
“The ill-will is disconcerting. Yet, urged to come on record, all his detractors refuse: “He’s dynamite”; “He’s vicious”; “He’s paranoid.” These allegations can perhaps be discounted – temperamental shortcomings that pale before the staggering body of work. Personal animosities that cannot be substantiated.”
CEMENT SCAM OF 1981
A loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Abdul Rehman Antulay, also known as Barrister Antulay, who hails from Shrivardhan in Konkan, became the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in 1980. Even as he was the chief minister, he floated and headed a trust called Indira Gandhi Pratishthan.
In those days (In 1981 to be precise), cement was a scarce (in short supply) commodity. So its distribution and allotment was controlled by the government. Builders who needed cement for construction work, could only obtain it from the state government under the control system. It meant that no one could buy cement in an open market. According to this system, cement was allotted or distributed to the builders equally. However, Antulay abused his position as the chief minister. He used his influence as the CM and asked builders to donate handsomely to his trust (Pratishthan). In return, he bent the rules and violated guidelines to favour some builders with more cement quota than they were eligible for.
Antulay was charged with malpractices and favouritism in giving cement meant for public consumption to private builders.
Antulay is believed to have collected Rs 30 crore for his trust by way of such donations from the builders who he favoured with supplying more and out-of-turn cement.
The scam came to light because of the then executive editor of the Indian Express Arun Shourie, who ran a series of exposes on how Antulay misused his authority in allotting cement to builders by violating guidelines. Sequel to the exposes, a petition was filed in the Bombay High Court against Antulay.
Justice Bakhtavar Lentin of the High Court found Antulay guilty of corruption and abuse of authority. Under public pressure, Antulay resigned, but he appealed against his conviction. Meanwhile, acting suo motu (on his own), the Governor of Maharashtra gave permission for the prosecution of Antulay under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Antulay not only lost his job as chief minister, he was also thrown into political wilderness for over 12 years. Later, he was given a clean chit by the Supreme Court, but Antulay was not only out of power, he was also out of people’s mind.
The Indian Express, which exposed the scandal, became a big hit with the public and its circulation really went zooming up.
Cement Scam:
Antulay Trust(1981): Antulay Trust(1981) AR Antulay had garnered Rs 30 crore from businesses dependent on state resources like cement, and kept the money in a private trust.
The court ruled that Antulay had illegally required Mumbai area builders to make donations to Indira Gandhi Pristhan trust, one of several trust funds he had established and controlled, in exchange for receiving more cement than the quota allotted to them by the Government.
He was forced to resign as Chief Minister of Maharashtra after the Bombay High Court convicted him of extortion on January 13, 1982. The court ruled that Antulay had illegally required Bombay area builders to make donations to Indira Gandhi Pristhan trust, one of several trust funds he had established and controlled, in exchange for receiving more cement than the quota allotted to them by the Government.
With the exposure of this scandal concerning A.R. Antulay, then the chief minister of Maharashtra, The Indian Express was reborn.
In the early 1980s, the Indian Express launched a campaign against the corruption of the then Chief Minister AR Antulay. That became known as the Cement Scam. It eventually led to the resignation of Antulay and had Prime Minister Indira Gandhi squirming in her seat. Owner Ramnath Goenka was under so much pressure after that expose that he had to sack editor Arun Shourie in the end.
---x-x-x-x
But hold your breath. Around the time S Nihal Singh unabashedly expressed his opinions about Arun Shourie’s credentials as a journalist and an editor in his autobiography titled Ink in My Veins, another well known and equally respected senior journalist, Vinod Mehta, also came up with an autobiography called Lucknow Boys. In this interesting book, Mehta digs up an old letter written by the now Chief Editor of Divya Marathi, Kumar Ketkar. This was when Mehta was the editor of The Sunday Observer, and Shourie had acquired a halo for exposing the alleged corruption of then Maharashtra Chief Minister, A R Antulay, in the then notorious cement scam in The Indian Express. Ketkar, who was a young and outspoken journalist in those days wrote: “Free from any constraint of veracity, Shourie is always able to provide exclusive stories.”
---c—c-c-c-c
Arun Shourie:
Shoma Chaudhury, the executive editor of Tehelka, does a much-required re-examination of Arun Shourie, the former editor of the Indian Express, who occupies an “adumbral position between liberal knight, self-righteous crusader and unselfconscious fascist”, in the context of a recent interview with his protege, Shekhar Gupta.
“Shourie joined the Indian Express as executive editor in January 1979 and over four blistering years of journalism, passed into media legend. Shourie rarely did the groundwork himself; his gift lay in creating moral frameworks and meticulous backgrounds–building stories into campaigns.
“The infamous Bhagalpur blinding case; the advocacy for the rights of undertrials; the buying of Kamala; the Antulay cement scam; the infamous Gundu Rao interview; the defeat of the Defamation Bill; and finally, the Kuo Oil scam. The Congress had come to symbolise corruption and anti-democratic practices: The Indian Express—and its most public face, the Goenka- Shourie duo—became the epitome of the fight against these mutilations.
“In 1982, with hundreds of cases against the paper, and allegedly under severe pressure from Indira Gandhi, Ramnath Goenka suddenly sacked Shourie. In 1987, with all his old warhorses gone or fading, he suddenly wanted him back and used Suman Dubey, Shourie’s brother-in-law, then editor of the paper and a friend of Rajiv Gandhi, to woo him back. A few months later, the Bofors scandal broke.
“More actinic years of journalism followed: the Bofors campaign and the campaign against Dhirubhai Ambani’s corruptions being the most high-profile. In 1990, Shourie was sacked again – unceremoniously, via teleprinter. There were cascading reasons: disagreements on reservations, the Mandal Commission, V.P. Singh’s handling of the Ayodhya movement and Goenka’s sense that Shourie was no longer in his control.
“At any rate, Shourie’s years as an editor shone with inspiration: he was a lighthouse in a dark time. As his Magasaysay Award citation says, “He used his pen as an effective adversary of corruption, inequality and injustice.” He fought for civil liberties and the rule of law; he had an appetite for the big battles.
“Yet, even at the height of his defence of liberal values in public life, disappointingly, Shourie’s professional peers and juniors say that in person, he was an intolerant, abusive and dictatorial man, incapable of democratic dialogue. The archetypal god with clay feet. Stories—unfortunately all of them off-the-record—abound: how he fought and slighted co-editors, S. Mulgaonkar, B.G. Verghese, Nihal Singh, Kuldip Nayar; how he ousted Suman Dubey; how he ravaged juniors.
“The ill-will is disconcerting. Yet, urged to come on record, all his detractors refuse: “He’s dynamite”; “He’s vicious”; “He’s paranoid.” These allegations can perhaps be discounted – temperamental shortcomings that pale before the staggering body of work. Personal animosities that cannot be substantiated.”