<b>Sreelatha Menon:</b> Shoe's on the other foot now

Despite the controversy over the repeated CBI clean chits to him over the years, and the protests over giving an election ticket to someone allegedly responsible for inciting mobs to kill thousands of Sikhs in 1984, the Congress party chose to nominate Jagdish Tytler for the north-east Delhi seat because of his ‘winnability’ factor. Ironic then, that Tytler should lose the seat even before the elections were held — in panic over the rising protests, culminating in a shoe thrown at the home minister, the Congress decided to drop both accused, Tytler and Sajjan Kumar, from their list of candidates.

Even more ironic, Tytler was born to a Hindu father and a Sikh mother in Pakistan in 1944, and was later brought up by a Christian educationist, the Reverend James Tytler who started the reputed Delhi Public School in the capital. Another fact that Tytler is proud to tell journalists is that some of his closest associates are Sikhs, indeed he was married in a gurudwara under Sikh rites. According to Tytler, his opponents within the Congress party used the protests as an excuse to get rid of him — who these opponents are is not hard to guess, considering that Tytler ran a campaign against Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit for a long time. Tytler points out that his name figures in just two of the 13,500 affidavits filed by Sikhs after the riots — and to establish that even these were fabricated, he alleges that the witness who says he saw Tytler inciting the mobs is himself a proclaimed offender and is hiding in the US (his critics argue, the witness is afraid to come to India to testify since he fears for his life).

Tytler first came to the Congress party as an associate of the late Sanjay Gandhi, and was part of his shouting brigade in Parliament after he won his first election in 1980. He later became a minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, and remained a minister in subsequent Congress dispensations including, till some time back, the UPA government as well — he was asked to step down in 2005 when the Nanawati Commission, appointed by the NDA government, referred to him in its report on the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

He was civil aviation minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government and says he began the process of privatisation in the sector. After that, Tytler has been a minister for labour, for surface transport and has even been the minister for overseas Indians. Tytler takes credit for the country’s tourism policy as well as for creating the National Highways Authority of India when he was the surface transport minister.

While Tytler has been dropped to prevent the Sikh anger from spreading, the last word on it has still not been said — the court has yet to pronounce its verdict on the CBI’s clean chit to him.