(phone rings)
Venkat: Hi, Morning Radia: Morning(wearily), I am going to call you actually. You know about this electoral thing.
Venkat: Ha, you— Radia: Sorry you go ahead.
Venkat: no, you know on this electoral trusts reports and all that came in Radia: Hmm,
Venkat: Boss had called Dinesh Vyas and told him to issue clarifications saying, it is not a Tata Electoral trust,
Radia: We did that. Venkat: OK, he says let Dinesh Vyas issue the statement.
Radia: well, the word because, I will tell you what it is,
Radia: because it is called Tata- Venkat: Uhuh.
Radia: you are going like, it looks like, we have said it, if you see the Business Standard, it has carried our statement. It says it is an independent trust.
Venkat: No it is not a Tata electoral trust, it is not even called a Tata Electoral Trust.
Radia: (slightly weary) what is it called? Venkat: It is called The Electoral Trust, that's all.
Radia: So where did the word - the letter, they have even published the letter, in—in Bengal.
Venkat: No— ummm (pause)—- you have a copy of the letter?
Radia: The letter is on my email, I will just forward it to you. Its come in Prathidin.
Radia: The thing is— I will send it you just now. The thing is Venkat, there are two things here.
Radia: One, If they were sending it, our heads up, it's a Tata thing right?
Radia: Its still considered a Tata thing, this Dinesh—I know Tatas contribute to it, right? Venkat: Yeah.
Radia: Ok, now the thing is that the moment that happens, he, the moment that's done,
Radia: he needs to give us a heads up. You know last night— Venkat: Dinesh has whatever(mild laugh)—
Radia: He is independent, is he? Venkat: Yeah, he is independent, quite independent. All the three trustees are independent.
Venkat: How they allocate the proportion, we don't know. Radia: umm
Venkat: just, of course, for our info, they tell us what it is. They tell Subedar for info. But they do their own.
Venkat: All the three trustees are, Mr.(Ardeshir) Dubash (Industrialist), Mr.Dinesh(Vyas, Supreme Court Advocate) and Shireen Bharucha(Social Worker), who has nothing to do with—
Radia: Ok, the thing is that if the letter said—
Venkat: It's not even Tata Electoral Trust also. It's called The Electoral Trust.
Radia: Ok, if now that's the case, I am now wondering how the word Tata came in,
Radia: unless its mentioned in the letter, that I will get it now. Venkat: anyway, people know that Dinesh Vyas is—
Venkat: this thing(voice trails off), Mr.A.D.Dubash, Shireen Bharucha and Dinesh, they are the trustees.
Venkat: Of course the contribution to the trust comes from the Tata group companies.
Venkat: But how it is distributed, to whom it is distributed, its is entirely upto the trustees to distribute it based on the rules.
Radia: Yeah. You know where it started from? She(Mamta Banerjee) gave an interview to StarAnanda yesterday.
Radia: And she showed the letter and the cheque.
Venkat: Just forward me the letter, I will just have a look.
Radia: Yes, the letter appeared in her paper, Prathidin, this morning, front page—it's in every Bengali paper.
Radia: And it's just that you know, the fact that—
Radia: one I didn't know that you give it to them after an election is over. So— Venkat: They do it in two parts.
Venkat: One before the election based on number of seats and after the election based on the number of seats they won— Radia: Which is fair enough.
Venkat: That's how DMK also got. DMK didn't get in the first this thing.
Venkat: After the election DMK also got based on the number of seats. They accepted. Everybody accepted, except CPM and, BSP did not accept.
Venkat: All others accepted. They've got Sonia Gandhi also accepted.
Venkat: Everybody has accepted.
Radia: So maybe when he has to issue the statement, he has to say that every other political party has accepted, except for the three.
Venkat: Yeah, except whomsoever who have not accepted. He should say, we distribute it to everybody, not only— (Call ends aprubtly).