Jain casts Vajpayee in his ISI serial’

The notices were received by the offices of the PM, Mishra and the IB Director on December 30, January 1 and December 29, respectively, according to the acknowledgements received by Jain’s lawyer, Aman Lekhi.

Jain TV, owned by Dr Jain, is scheduled to telecast the first episode of a series of promised exposes against Mishra on the concluding day of the BJP’s national executive on Friday. It has also launched another TV campaign titled — We want national security and not a surrender before terrorism’ — against Vajpayee’s peace initiative in Kashmir.

Jain was expected to pipe down after being granted two major favours by the Government — a TV news agency and uplinking facility for his channel — last month. He has instead stepped up his campaign against Mishra and also targeted Vajpayee with the covert support of a section of the RSS and BJP leaders, according to a BJP Minister.

According to Jain, when BJP chief Bangaru Laxman requested him to withdraw the notices, “I told him the notice was not against Vajpayee but the Prime Minister and it could be taken back only when the charge against me was withdrawn.”

The Jain TV campaign on Kashmir contains a clipping of Vajpayee’s speech at the BJP’s National Security Rally on May 2, 1990 at New Delhi. “We will have to reply to guns with guns and bullets with bullets only, till the Kashmir youth continue to hold guns. The reply will be given by our police and if need be by the Army as well,” Vajpayee is heard saying.

Counsel P N Lekhi explains the Prime Minister has been made a party in the case because RAW works directly under him and only he can dismiss the RAW chief and Mishra.

The notice refers to a similar RAW report allegedly used by the then Railway Minister Abdul Ghani Khan Chaudhury against his younger brother, Abu Nasser Khan Chaudhury, because of a property dispute in 1987-88. Nasser’s case was contested and won by Lekhi himself, who feels Jain’s case is quite similar.