 "Subhash Chandra")
Not many were surprised when Subhash Chandra, 65-year-old chairman of the Zee Group, joined Narendra Modi, prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the time, at an election rally in Kurukshetra on April 3, 2014.
Zee News, a television channel of the Zee Group, faced a criminal charge filed by coal tycoon Naveen Jindal, also Congress MP from Kurukshetra. With barely a week for polling, Chandra appealed to the crowd to support the BJP in the elections. It was an appeal he repeated during the Haryana Assembly polls some months later in August and even expressed a wish to contest on the party ticket from Hisar.
Chandra’s love for the BJP, it would seem, stemmed from an association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) when younger. Actually, the real reason, as he writes in his recently published memoirs, was his targeting by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government against him and his company. The autobiography, The Z Factor, which Prime Minister Modi unveiled this Wednesday at his official bungalow, has several anecdotes about Chandra's close association with powerful politicians.
Chandra has dabbled in several businesses. He has owned a packaging company, has even tried to lock horns with the Indian cricket board by promoting the Indian Cricket League and in the early 1990s, launched India’s first privately owned entertainment channel. His big money had come by exporting rice to the erstwhile Soviet Union in the early 1980s.
Chandra had cultivated Sanjay Gandhi during the time the Congress was out of power in the late 1970s. It was a generosity, Chandra says, that the Gandhi family didn't forget even after Sanjay's death. Chandra says he was helped with the rice export deal by Indira Gandhi’s yoga teacher, Dhirendra Brahmchari. Chandra says Brahmchari was a magnetic personality, always surrounded by half a dozen women.
It was Brahmachari's excessive greed that led to the yoga practitioner's downfall. He says Brahmchari, initially a partner, floated his own company for rice export. The yoga guru conveyed to Chandra, then only 32, that not only would there be no more export contracts but that he wouldn’t return Rs 2 crore he owed the latter. Word reached Indira Gandhi through son Rajiv, then a general secretary of the Congress. Chandra appeared before the PM, with Brahmchari sitting by her side, and told her the amount of money her yoga teacher owed him. Chandra says from that day, Brahmchari’s downfall began.
Chandra says he ran the rice export trade from 1981 to 1984. He claims to have shared the profits for the first two years with Brahmachari and the next two years with then Congress party treasurer Sitaram Kesri. “Many years later, after Rajiv was assassinated, I was told the Gandhi family believed much of the profits from the rice trade were siphoned away by Arun Nehru,” he writes.
He claims how at the time he also became a messenger for requests for meetings between Rajiv Gandhi and the Soviets. “The code name we had for Rajiv with the Soviets was White Trousers,” says Chandra.
In the early 1990s, the businessman launched an entertainment channel, Zee TV, which also broadcast a news bulletin. “I said to myself, ‘Subhash, this box has given you a different profile. You should not think that you have created the Zee network. Rather, you should think that the Zee network has created a new you’."
Chandra has written in some detail about his run-in with NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch and others on direct-to-home (DTH) television. Murdoch had a monopoly on DTH and Chandra wanted to launch Zee’s similar service in India. During the prime ministerial tenure of I K Gujral “some domestic TV industry players and modern-day turncoats also began lobbying for foreign DTH players in India. These were similar to Indian rulers who had helped the British establish their rule in India. I believe Gujral was persuaded by a prominent TV production house owner, who later became a broadcaster, to allow Murdoch to launch DTH operations. This producer was already selling content to STAR channels.”
He says Gujral started to get convinced but his information and broadcasting minister, S Jaipal Reddy, checked and found the Telegraph Act did not allow such services. He and Cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian issued a notification clarifying the issue and to remove any doubt about the status of DTH. The notification disallowed DTH services without proper permission or licence, stymying the efforts of Murdoch and others.
Later, Chandra says he lobbied against the campaign by NewsCorp and other foreign groups to increase the cap on foreign holdings in media companies from 26 per cent to 74 per cent. He says he met RSS chief Rajju Bhaiya (Rajendra Singh) in Nagpur and his deputy, K S Sudarshan. “I think they convinced the Vajpayee government to limit FDI in the media,” says Chandra.
Chandra writes the Vajpayee government was in power while his company was negotiating STAR's exit (from India). He says a section in the government and the BJP felt if STAR exited/merged with Zee, then the “Zee Group and I would become too powerful”. He claims his detractors were prominent business groups. “I got a call from Murdoch, who said, "You don't seem to have good relations with the Indian government." He then told me that Sushma Swaraj had met him in New York and told him the Indian government was not in favour of the STAR-Zee deal. She had apparently promised support to NewsCorp for their businesses in India,” Chandra writes.
Chandra says he was informed by a friend in the Vajpayee government “that while the official reason for Swaraj going to New York was to attend the UN general assembly, meeting Murdoch was also an important objective of the trip”. “No surprise, then, that STAR TV decided to oblige the Vajpayee government and stayed on in India. I don't know why Swaraj was made to do this,” says Chandra, suggesting this was done at the behest of someone plotting against him.
Zee News, a television channel of the Zee Group, faced a criminal charge filed by coal tycoon Naveen Jindal, also Congress MP from Kurukshetra. With barely a week for polling, Chandra appealed to the crowd to support the BJP in the elections. It was an appeal he repeated during the Haryana Assembly polls some months later in August and even expressed a wish to contest on the party ticket from Hisar.
Chandra’s love for the BJP, it would seem, stemmed from an association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) when younger. Actually, the real reason, as he writes in his recently published memoirs, was his targeting by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government against him and his company. The autobiography, The Z Factor, which Prime Minister Modi unveiled this Wednesday at his official bungalow, has several anecdotes about Chandra's close association with powerful politicians.
Chandra has dabbled in several businesses. He has owned a packaging company, has even tried to lock horns with the Indian cricket board by promoting the Indian Cricket League and in the early 1990s, launched India’s first privately owned entertainment channel. His big money had come by exporting rice to the erstwhile Soviet Union in the early 1980s.
Chandra had cultivated Sanjay Gandhi during the time the Congress was out of power in the late 1970s. It was a generosity, Chandra says, that the Gandhi family didn't forget even after Sanjay's death. Chandra says he was helped with the rice export deal by Indira Gandhi’s yoga teacher, Dhirendra Brahmchari. Chandra says Brahmchari was a magnetic personality, always surrounded by half a dozen women.
It was Brahmachari's excessive greed that led to the yoga practitioner's downfall. He says Brahmchari, initially a partner, floated his own company for rice export. The yoga guru conveyed to Chandra, then only 32, that not only would there be no more export contracts but that he wouldn’t return Rs 2 crore he owed the latter. Word reached Indira Gandhi through son Rajiv, then a general secretary of the Congress. Chandra appeared before the PM, with Brahmchari sitting by her side, and told her the amount of money her yoga teacher owed him. Chandra says from that day, Brahmchari’s downfall began.
Chandra says he ran the rice export trade from 1981 to 1984. He claims to have shared the profits for the first two years with Brahmachari and the next two years with then Congress party treasurer Sitaram Kesri. “Many years later, after Rajiv was assassinated, I was told the Gandhi family believed much of the profits from the rice trade were siphoned away by Arun Nehru,” he writes.
He claims how at the time he also became a messenger for requests for meetings between Rajiv Gandhi and the Soviets. “The code name we had for Rajiv with the Soviets was White Trousers,” says Chandra.
In the early 1990s, the businessman launched an entertainment channel, Zee TV, which also broadcast a news bulletin. “I said to myself, ‘Subhash, this box has given you a different profile. You should not think that you have created the Zee network. Rather, you should think that the Zee network has created a new you’."
Chandra has written in some detail about his run-in with NewsCorp's Rupert Murdoch and others on direct-to-home (DTH) television. Murdoch had a monopoly on DTH and Chandra wanted to launch Zee’s similar service in India. During the prime ministerial tenure of I K Gujral “some domestic TV industry players and modern-day turncoats also began lobbying for foreign DTH players in India. These were similar to Indian rulers who had helped the British establish their rule in India. I believe Gujral was persuaded by a prominent TV production house owner, who later became a broadcaster, to allow Murdoch to launch DTH operations. This producer was already selling content to STAR channels.”
He says Gujral started to get convinced but his information and broadcasting minister, S Jaipal Reddy, checked and found the Telegraph Act did not allow such services. He and Cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian issued a notification clarifying the issue and to remove any doubt about the status of DTH. The notification disallowed DTH services without proper permission or licence, stymying the efforts of Murdoch and others.
Later, Chandra says he lobbied against the campaign by NewsCorp and other foreign groups to increase the cap on foreign holdings in media companies from 26 per cent to 74 per cent. He says he met RSS chief Rajju Bhaiya (Rajendra Singh) in Nagpur and his deputy, K S Sudarshan. “I think they convinced the Vajpayee government to limit FDI in the media,” says Chandra.
Chandra writes the Vajpayee government was in power while his company was negotiating STAR's exit (from India). He says a section in the government and the BJP felt if STAR exited/merged with Zee, then the “Zee Group and I would become too powerful”. He claims his detractors were prominent business groups. “I got a call from Murdoch, who said, "You don't seem to have good relations with the Indian government." He then told me that Sushma Swaraj had met him in New York and told him the Indian government was not in favour of the STAR-Zee deal. She had apparently promised support to NewsCorp for their businesses in India,” Chandra writes.
Chandra says he was informed by a friend in the Vajpayee government “that while the official reason for Swaraj going to New York was to attend the UN general assembly, meeting Murdoch was also an important objective of the trip”. “No surprise, then, that STAR TV decided to oblige the Vajpayee government and stayed on in India. I don't know why Swaraj was made to do this,” says Chandra, suggesting this was done at the behest of someone plotting against him.
