During the Congress regime, India witnessed one of its most brazen political cover-up attempts — one that forced an External Affairs Minister out of office, rattled Parliament, and left permanent questions about whether the Congress government of the time had weaponised India’s foreign policy to protect itself from one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s history.

On 30 March 1992, External Affairs Minister Madhavsinh Solanki confessed before Parliament that he had personally handed over a note to Swiss Foreign Minister René Felber during a visit to Davos in February 1992.

Solanki claimed the note had been given to him by a private lawyer, but in a stunning admission, acknowledged that he did not remember the lawyer’s name. He expressed regret over the matter in a written statement to Parliament.

The Note That Shook Parliament

The document handed to Swiss authorities was what diplomats call a “non-paper” – an unsigned, unofficial memorandum. Its content, however, was explosive. According to court records from Delhi High Court, the note urged Switzerland to go slow on sharing bank details linked to the ongoing Bofors investigation.

The timing could not have been worse or more revealing. At the very same time, India’s CBI had formally submitted a court-issued Letter Rogatory to Switzerland, legally requesting cooperation and banking documents connected to the alleged ₹64 crore kickback trail from the 1986 Bofors howitzer deal. A baffled Swiss federal justice department, receiving both a court-backed CBI request and Solanki’s informal note contradicting it, handed the note directly to the CBI, effectively blowing the cover on the entire operation.

The Indian Express then published details of the note, triggering immediate pandemonium across both Houses of Parliament on 31 March 1992.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐃𝐚𝐲, 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 — 𝟑𝟏 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟐: 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐰𝐧.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐝:

• In March 1992, External Affairs Minister Madhav Singh Solanki travelled… pic.twitter.com/KRimN3vFNi

— BJP (@BJP4India) March 31, 2026

Why the Bofors Case Was So Politically Sensitive

The Bofors scandal centred on alleged kickbacks paid by Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors to unnamed Indian middlemen in exchange for securing a ₹1,437 crore deal to supply 155mm howitzers to the Indian Army. The scandal had already cost the Congress party the 1989 general election, with then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi at the centre of the controversy.

Under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s Congress government, rather than pursuing the investigation aggressively, the government was now seen as actively interfering with its own, court-directed probe – a detail that enraged the opposition and shocked legal observers.

Parliament Erupts

The Rajya Sabha debate record of 30 March 1992 confirms that opposition members demanded Solanki’s resignation, calling his conduct “gross misdemeanour” and “outrageous.”

A subsequent Rajya Sabha debate on 2 April 1992 further established that a CBI delegation which was scheduled to travel to Switzerland cancelled its visit after Solanki had handed over the letter – directly impeding an active investigation.

PM Narasimha Rao’s own statement to Parliament confirmed: “I was not aware of the note handed over by Shri Solanki, nor did I authorise any note being handed over to the Swiss Foreign Minister.”

Resignation and Unanswered Questions

Madhavsinh Solanki resigned on 31 March 1992. The legal battle, however, dragged on for decades. The CBI registered an FIR against Solanki in April 2003 for producing false evidence under IPC. In 2018, a Delhi court ordered criminal prosecution of Solanki for handing over a “fabricated” and “misleading” memorandum to Swiss authorities — 26 years after the original offence. The court stated plainly: “This court will not allow anyone to interfere with judicial proceedings, whosoever he or she may be.”

Solanki fought the FIR all the way to the Delhi High Court, arguing the note was given to him by a lawyer and that no facts in it were false. The High Court rejected his plea to quash the FIR in 2014. He died in January 2021 without ever revealing the lawyer’s identity.

The Question That Lingers

The Solanki affair remains a defining case study in institutional betrayal. A sitting External Affairs Minister used an international diplomatic forum to privately undermine a court-directed criminal investigation – on Indian soil, against Indian interests, at a time when India’s judicial machinery was formally and correctly pursuing evidence abroad.

Was India’s foreign policy being deployed to defend the nation’s interests or to bury a scandal? The courts said it was the latter. Parliament said it was the latter. And Solanki never said otherwise.

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The post How Congress Used India’s Foreign Policy To Bury The Bofors Scam Trail appeared first on The Commune.