A Man of Many Parts

Fumbling on national security while being sure-footed on the economy. An extract

On 24 December 1999 Indian Airlines IC 814 from Kathmandu to Delhi was hijacked by a Kashmir-based terrorist group. The pilot was first ordered to fly to Lahore, and when Lahore refused it permission to land, IC 814 touched down in Amritsar at 7 p.m., with only 20 minutes of fuel remaining. The plane was hijacked a little after 4.30 pm., but an emergency cabinet meeting in Delhi got under way at Vajpayee’s residence only at 6 p.m. Vajpayee was away in Lucknow at the time of the hijacking. He was not immediately informed of the seizure of the plane as he was en route to Delhi and was able to join the emergency meeting only at 7 p.m., more than two hours after the plane was captured. It was the end of December. The new year would herald a new century and Vajpayee had been looking forward to his seventy-fifth birthday and the party planned for him in Chennai by Pramod Mahajan. IC 814 crashed into his year-end reverie and he was unable to gather his wits in time.

As news of the hijacking spread, wailing relatives of IC 814 passengers gathered in front of the prime minister’s residence at 7 Race Course Road. TV news went into overdrive, broadcasting their anxious laments round the clock. When IC 814 was on the ground in Amritsar, the government’s Crisis Management Group (CMG) and Cabinet Committee on Security erupted into the Tower of Babel. Views and counterviews kept being interchanged. At one point, foreign minister Jaswant Singh snatched the phone, telephoned the Punjab police chief and ordered that the plane be immobilized on the runway by means of a trolley or a truck. But the Punjab police did nothing as the Punjab chief minister kept insisting that passengers should not be harmed. Vajpayee sat listening in silence, taking no decisions, only occasionally and plaintively asking about the passengers’ plight. A chattering, arguing Vajpayee government and a silent, indecis