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Hindujas' British passports will be declared
'above board', say media reports

"Sir Hammond's report into the passport affair will conclude that the Home Office ministers complied with the official policy by granting British citizenship to Gopichand and Srichand Hinduja (president and chairman respectively of the Hinduja group)", the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The Sunday Observer, which claimed to have seen a copy of the official inquiry into the affair, said Peter Mandelson who resigned from the cabinet following a row over the passport issue, 'did mislead the prime minister'.

It said the inquiry report would be a 'serious setback for Mandelson in his fight to clear his name over the Hinduja passport affairs. The report will criticise him for changing his story and challenge his recollections of the affair'.

"It will fall short of calling him a liar, but it will raise queries about what he did and when, and imply that his recollections were at best somewhat hazy," the paper said.

The Telegraph said Sir Hammond is expected to state that the 'speed with which the decisions were taken - in six months rather than the average 18 months - was not unusual'.

"Sir Hammond will conclude that there is no evidence to support claims that the decision to issue the brothers with passports was influenced by their gift of one million pound to rescue the faith zone at the ill-fated millennium dome," the paper said.

The Telegraph also carried a comment from Srichand Hinduja from Bombay saying, "We made our application for citizenship in the normal way. I'm surprised everyone in England is going so crazy over this."

The paper said the inquiry report, which is expected to be submitted to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on February 28, also criticises Alistair Campbell, the prime minister's official spokesman, for acting 'too precipitously' when Mandelson was confronted with the contradictions in his story.

Mandelson resigned on January 24 after being accused of making misleading statements over his role in the passport application of Srichand Hinduja. He claimed he did not remember a telephone call to Mike O'Brien, the home office minister, in which he was alleged to have raised Hinduja's application for a British passport.

The Telegraph report stated that the inquiry 'will clear ministers of any impropriety, but leave unresolved the question of whether Mandelson lied to cover up the controversy'.

Mandelson's friends claim he was convicted by a 'kangaroo court' that included the cabinet secretary, Sir Richard Wilson, Campbell and Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor.

"Peter was convicted before he had any chance to put his case," a friend of Mandelson told the Sunday Times. "It was simply a political execution," he said.

This was the second time Mandelson had been forced to leave the cabinet. He first resigned in December 1998 amid the row over his 373,000 pound home loan from treasury minister Geoffrey Robinson.

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