NEW DELHI: The former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya on Thursday denied he had a hand in the Mumbai Hotel Airport Centaur disinvestment deal concluded during the tenure of the National Democratic Alliance Government.

He said he would "welcome a probe by any government agency and will fully cooperate with it in order to clear his name."

No business ties with Batra

In a press statement here, a lawyers' firm Karanjawala and Company said on behalf of and under instructions from its client, Mr. Bhattacharya, that he had no business relationship whatsoever with A.L. Batra (who bought the hotel for Rs. 83 crores and resold it for Rs. 115 crores within four months).

He was responding to the allegation by the Rajya Sabha deputy leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Dipankar Mukherjee, Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan and journalist Paranjoy Guha on Wednesday that Mr. Bhattacharya was "no ordinary deal broker"; he had strong links with Mr. Batra and telephoned a senior Hotel Corporation official on April 18, 2002 through a business associate Sanjeev Tyagi to ask for the details of the sale agreement between the corporation and Mr. Batra.

They alleged that by omitting a clause in the agreement prohibiting resale within a lock-in period, Mr. Batra could make a profit of Rs. 32 crores "within four months."

Mr. Bhattacharya said that while he was in the hotel business and had two joint ventures with Carlson Hotels Worldwide, he had nothing to do with one of the hotels in the Carlson group portfolio, the Delhi Radisson, "in which Mr. Batra has a substantial interest."

As for the common director, K.B. Kachru, who is on the board of A.B. Hotels (which owns the Delhi Radisson) as well as on the board of Mr. Bhattacharya's two joint ventures with the Carlson group, Mr. Bhattacharya said: Mr. Kachru was on the board of his two joint ventures "by virtue of being a Carlson nominee."

He denied having made any call "to anyone in Hotel Corporation, either from one Sanjeev Tyagi's phone or otherwise" on April 18, 2002 or on any other day.

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