On 20 July 2015, The Caravan published the first installment of a list that consisted of 222 people, including some of India’s top politicians, bureaucrats and journalists. This list was a part of an email that had been sent on 1 November 2010, by Alok Chauhan, a corporate affairs executive at Essar Services India Limited (ESIL) to Sunil Bajaj, the director and head of the corporate relations group at ESIL. The email and the list appeared to indicate that those mentioned had been sent iPads by Essar on Diwali that fell on 5 November that year.
The first part of this list contained the names and responses of all the journalists who had received iPads from Essar according to the document, while the second one concerned itself with the politicians who had been mentioned. The third and final part of this series comprises the names of the bureaucrats who received an iPad according to the list. While The Caravan attempted to get in touch with all those whose names have been recorded, several people we contacted were either not available or declined to respond. This list also contains the names of those for whom iPads were never requisitioned leave alone delivered by Essar. We have reproduced it in its entirety only in the interest of veracity.
The names on these lists and the process through which they were contacted and gifted iPads by Essar, reveals the time and effort that the company was willing to invest in cultivating influence. The bureaucrats that the Essar appears to have reached out to were placed in ministries such as environment, home affairs, finance, corporate affairs and steel, while some of them were even a part of the intelligence bureau, cabinet secretariat planning commission and prime minister’s office.
A former employee from Essar who is familiar with the organisation’s processes told The Caravan that a relationship manager listed under the column “Rel_Mgr” in the document had been assigned the responsibility for delivering the gifts to select subsets on the list. In most cases, these iPads were hand-delivered and any that were returned on the spot were marked on the document. Out of a total of 195 iPads that were issued, only 21 were marked as returned. While it is possible that these iPads were returned after this list had been compiled, it is noteworthy that out of the 19 bureaucrats that The Caravan was able to get in touch with, not even one admitted to accepting the gift themselves.
1. JM Mauskar was then an additional secretary at the ministry of environment and forests. On being asked about whether he received an iPad from Essar, he said, “I have an iPad, but it was duly purchased after I retired in 2012.” He also said that he was not aware of Essar sending him any iPads and added, “I was using a Sony laptop given to me by the ministry in 2010.”
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