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| Rajiv Gandhi faced an Army coup as well? |
October 4, 2015, NewsCrunch
Retired Lt Gen P N Hoon, former head of the Western Command, has claimed that in 1987 Indian Army was part of a plot to remove Rajiv Gandhi from power.
Though he has made these claims earlier as well, his just-released book 'The Untold Truth' reignites the controversy.
A report by The Times of India, based on the book, informs that Army HQ under Gen Sundarji asked three para-commando battalions to move for action in Delhi. One of these battalions was under Hoon, who not only stalled the movement, but also briefed Rajiv Gandhi and his principal secretary Gopi Arora about the plan.
He was also approached by Congress dissident leader V C Shukla, who wanted to know how Army would react, if President Zail Singh dismissed PM Rajiv Gandhi.
In his presidency's closing days, Zail Singh seriously thought of ousting Rajiv Gandhi from power. Several opposition leaders, Congress dissidents and an assorted group of backers, including journalists, bureaucrats and lawyers, had come together to see Rajiv Gandhi exit before his time.
As the contemporary accounts of the tumultuous events reveal, the maneuvers were political and legal in nature. Nobody,at least on record, ever thought of dragging the Army into it.
But if Zail Singh had gone ahead and dismissed the Prime Minister, he would have not only overstepped the outer boundaries of his power, but also entered constitutional grey waters.
It would have created a free-for-all situation in which the the force and the loyalties of different institutions would have come into play.
May be it was in that context the pro-dismissal group sought to open a channel with the Army to try to keep it on its side.
Hoon admirably opted to stay out of the messy power struggle saying Indian Army was apolitical, Sundarji seemed to have been more deeply involved if we go by his account.
Why would Sundarji the most ambitious of Indian generals, a soldier who took incredibly risks, do it? If he indeed did so, there is no easy answer for that.