Essar gave iPads as Diwali gifts to politicians, bureaucrats and journos

July 20, 2015 23:59

On 1 November 2010, Alok Chauhan, a corporate affairs executive at Essar Services India Limited sent an email to Sunil Bajaj, director and head of the corporate relations group at ESIL.

Attached to this email was a list, in possession of The Caravan, that contained the names of 222 people, including some of Indias top politicians, bureaucrats and journalists.

The list indicates that those mentioned on it had been sent iPads ahead of Diwali -- which fell on 5 November that year -- by Essar.

This document is the latest in a long string of revelations often termed as the Essar leaks. At the end of last year, a person with access to Essars internal communications approached the Delhi-based lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan. This whistle-blower was privy to details of the companys attempts at managing the government and the media. Bhushans team went through hundreds of pages of the whistle-blowers trove, and found proof that the company provided favours to numerous journalists and political leaders such as Pranab Mukherjee and Nitin Gadkari.

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