Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's relationship with Lalit Modi's family, and her role in facilitating his virtual entry and subsequent rise in the Board of Control for Cricket in India, has been well-documented.

Which is why, many were surprised to find the beleaguered former chief of Indian Premier League dragging in the name of his mentor and family friend into the recent controversy that initially seemed to involve only Sushma Swaraj, the minister for  external affairs.

On Tuesday, Modi's public relations team released a three-page note that seemed to indicate that Raje had supported his application for immigration to the UK in 2011, when she was the leader of the opposition in her state, but on condition of strict secrecy – a claim Modi reiterated in his interview to Rajdeep Sardesai on India Today TV.

"This witness statement is provided on the strict understanding that its contents and the identity of its maker are treated confidentially and that it is used only for the purposes stated in it," said the document dated August 18, 2011, nearly a year after allegations of corruption surfaced against Modi in connection with the multi-billion dollar cricket league he founded.

Purported to be Raje's testimony, the document also stated:
"I make this statement in support of any immigration application that Lalit Modi makes, but do so on the strict condition that my assistance will not become known to the Indian authorities."

"I know Modi's family," Raje told news agency ANI in Jaipur, on being questioned about the veracity of the document.  "But I do not know what is this document they are talking about."

Modi's claims were also questioned by Raje's supporters, who pointed out that the document did not bear her signature. Modi told Sardesai that the original of the document with Raje's signature was with a London court. But that was not all he said, for he decided to volunteer:  "My wife was being taken to Portugal by whom? By Mrs Vasundhara Raje. Nobody knows that, I am putting that on record now."

Modi went on to add that Raje accompanied his wife Minal to Portugal in 2012 and 2013:
"My relationship with Vasundhara Raje goes back 30 years. That relationship is known to everybody. She is a close friend of the family and my wife for a long time...She openly agreed to be (to be a witness), but unfortunately by the time the case went to trial, she was already chief Minister, so she did not come to become a witness. The statements she gave is all on records in the courts."

What explains this?

So the obvious question: Why would Modi want to drag in somebody he also calls an old family friend?

And the obvious answer: With friends like Lalit Modi, who needs enemies?

But more seriously, observers point to Modi's souring relationship with Raje as the reason, the strongest confirmation of which is offered as Modi being replaced as the Rajasthan Cricket Association president in October 2014 by Bharatiya Janata Party's minority cell convener in the state, Amin Pathan, once a confidant of Modi, and also considered a Raje associate.

Modi challenged the manner in which the above was confirmed in a no-confidence motion against him that was passed in the extra ordinary general body meeting of the Rajasthan Cricket Association on March 9, 2015. Within hours of his ouster, an obviously furious Modi had tweeted:

And if that was not enough, he made his intentions clear by tweeting:



There is a background to this too. For as far as the BCCI is concerned, things should not have come to this pass for he should never have been  reinstalled in the Rajasthan Cricket Association  as its president in May 2014, as he had been expelled for life from the country's premier cricketing body on September 25, 2013. But Raje, after her landslide victory in December 2013 assembly elections, had disregarded the possible consequences and political fallout of Modi’s actions and ensured his reappointment. The BCCI responded almost immediately by suspending the Rajasthan Cricket Association  for allowing a banned individual participate in its operations. It also went on to omit Rajasthan's teams from its domestic programme for the next season. And that is how Rajasthan High Court got involved, as it was moved on behalf of 75 Rajasthan cricketers, asking that they not be made to suffer "only for one reason, which is the grudge between BCCI and RCA". By October, as Raje looked away, an anti-Modi lobby, headed by Rajasthan Cricket Association  vice-president Amin Pathan, claimed to have met separately and voted Modi out of the association. Modi had then turned to Twitter, suggesting that BJP leader Om Mathur be made Chief Minister of Rajasthan, while attacking Raje's aides.



The charges of a coterie were aimed at the central figure of Arun Jaitley, now the Union finance minister, who was the BJP's leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha and in charge of his party's campaign for the Rajasthan assembly elections in December, 2013. Just before the elections, Modi had come up with a series of tweets against Jaitley.

In yet another tweet, he warned Raje:

 

When asked  why he simply didn’t call up Raje, Modi said the word needed to go out. Modi seemed to be so upset, he tweeted:

Reacting to Modi’s tweets, former chief minister and Congress leader Ashok Gehlot charged that Raje’s aides were involved in corruption. He also alleged that Raje was behind Modi’s tweets against Jaitley. "Yeh unki apni rajniti hai (All these are part of her politics),” Gehlot had said, hoping perhaps to cause a rift between the two, for it was Jaitley who had helped Raje become the BJP's chief ministerial candidate.

The BJP responded by dismissing Modi as a fugitive from law and claimed that the reason for this public outburst was his close aide being denied a ticket from Dausa. Raje did not respond to the controversy.

Significantly, Jaitley had been on the BCCI’s special enquiry panel, appointed to conduct an enquiry into the 11 charges against Modi, that found him guilty on eight counts, following which a special general meeting of the BCCI expelled Modi for life from the country's premier cricketing body on September 25, 2013. Modi, the founding chairman of the IPL, was earlier suspended by the BCCI on April 26, 2010, following various allegations of misconduct.

Full circle

What is ironic is that Rajasthan Cricket Association is where it all began. In 2005, when the little-known Lalit Modi managed to defeat Kishore Rungta, then president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association, whose family had virtually ruled state cricket for about 40 years, Rungta had alleged that the association elections had been rigged as the district associations were arm-twisted by Raje government to submit proxies in favour of Modi.

The electorate for the RCA comprised 33 district associations and 67 individual members, most of whom happened to be Rungta family loyalists.

It was widely known that the government of Raje, who had taken over the reigns of Rajasthan in her first term as chief minister in December 2003, had pulled out all stops to ensure Modi's victory, for it had earlier also come up with a controversial sports ordinance that denied voting rights to individual members of the Rajasthan Cricket Association.

Super Chief Minister

As Modi began making his way up in the BCCI, he also allegedly got engaged in finalising various land deals and contracts in Rajasthan. His alleged involvement and interference in various government functions drew so much public attention that people took to calling him "Super CM" and  Raje was subjected to serious charges of corruption.

Controversy was created when the Raje government floated Amber Development & Management Authority under the Societies Act, with Raje herself as one of its promoters. The authority was allegedly instrumental in the sale of two heritage mansions – Chhabron Ki Haveli and Bairathion ki Haveli –  in the vicinity of the historic Amber Palace, measuring 466.66 square yard and 1463.47 square yards  at the throw away price of Rs 9 lakh and Rs 21 lakh to Amber Heritage City Construction Private Limited.

After purchasing the havelis, the company changed its name to Anand Hotels Limited with Lalit Modi and his wife Minal Modi as its directors in April 2007.

In the run up to the 2008 assembly polls, Congress made corruption its main plank. Former chief minister Ashok Gehlot described Modi as a “satta ka dalai” (power broker) who was finalising shoddy deals from his suite in the Rambagh Palace Hotel of Jaipur. Raje-led BJP was humbled in the elections.

During Gehlot-led Congress regime in 2010, the local authorities seized the two havelis, as they were found to be the property of the state government. A hotel was reportedly under construction in the Bairathion Ki Haveli.

Dynastic links

The Raje-Modi nexus is also under the scanner because of the alleged involvement of her son, Dushyant Singh, the third-term MP from Jhalawar-Baran, in dubious money transactions with Modi.

Jaipur-based lawyer Poonam Chand Bhandari alleged in a series of letters to the Enforcement Directorate that between 2007 and 2009, Ananda Heritage, a company owned by Modi and his wife Minal, had given loans aggregating Rs 11.6 crore, starting with an unsecured loan of Rs 3.8 crore in 2007, to Niyant Heritage Hotel, a firm set up by Dushyant Singh and his wife in 2005, with Rs one lakh.

Bhandari alleged that the money transferred to Niyant Hospitality was routed through a fictitious Mauritius-based company and it was a case of "round tripping" of money. Within three years, the share price of the company was found to have gone up from Rs 10 to Rs 96,000 per share, as that is the rate at which Modi bought shares in this company, in two tranches in 2008 and 2009.

In response to Bhandari's 2013 petition, a division bench of the Delhi High Court refused in January 2015 to intervene in the matter, saying that it was not necessary since the government had informed the court that an investigation into the matter had already been initiated.

Two former directors of Ananda Heritage, Sajjan Modi and Satya Narayan, are currently under investigations by the Enforcement Directorate. In addition to Modi and his wife Minal, the company now has a third director, one Anup Bartoria, who was also questioned by the ED on March 16.

On his part, Dushyant has issued a statement saying that all transactions of his company, Niyant Heritage Hotels Pvt Ltd, "are in accordance and in compliance with the Companies Act and income tax rules. Every fact has been mentioned in the IT returns which is available. My company has not done anything illegal and has not committed any irregularity."

It is because of these charges that Vasundhara Raje finds herself in a bigger soup than Sushma Swaraj, as her son is now being taunted as "the BJP's Robert Vadra" and the BJP has refused to offer public support, leaving her to come up with her own defence.

Her first term as Rajasthan chief minister came under a cloud because of her involvement with Modi. When she lost the 2008 assembly elections, Modi was blamed. And now, it seems, her second term too has come under the shadow of the friend who has left many singed in the past.