Chidambaram as he breaks the news of YSR’s death to the media in Delhi. (PTI)

New Delhi, Sept. 3: Bhaskar Sharma, a secretary to the late Y.S.R. Reddy, got a mouthful from home ministry officials for saying mid-afternoon yesterday his boss was “safe”, and so did an air traffic controller in Hyderabad for speaking out of turn.

Within hours of reports that the Andhra Pradesh chief minister’s chopper had disappeared from radar screens on Wednesday morning, Union home minister P. Chidambaram sent down a lucid and firm message to officials: do not go through multiple sources, work through a visible and single line of command and communication, check facts from the ground.

As a result, despite the misinformation from sources in Andhra, the home ministry was able to avoid confusion and stick to the task at hand. Through the crisis, civilian and military officials on the ground reported directly to Chidambaram’s team and taking orders from them.

From 12.45pm yesterday to the evacuation of the bodies of Reddy, his officials and crew from the remote site of the crash in the Nallamala hills, — all winched up by air force choppers — what played out was an exemplary search and recovery operation: consistent, calm, controlled and focused on the job at hand.

And through most of it, the operation was as transparent as it could have been; Chidambaram himself, and operational ground commanders like Air Commodore A.S. Bharti, briefing the media from time to time on the progress of efforts. This was perhaps possible because Chidambaram swiftly took the crisis in hand and mapped and monitored it personally through to the end from his war room in North Block.

Helming operations like a field commander in battle, Chidambaram moved by example on how things should be done.

He remained closeted for almost six hours in his chamber, asking for maps of southern Andhra Pradesh and regular inputs from the ground, and moving quickly on the deployment of a whole range of ground and air forces for the search.

The handling of the YSR crisis was so starkly different, and assuring, it drew immediate comparisons with New Delhi’s response to the 26/11 Mumbai assault, which was marked by a series of delays and operational bungles as a result of which the then home minister, Shivraj Patil, lost his job.

News of YSR’s missing chopper filtered into Chidamabaram’s office around 12.45pm yesterday, when he was already holding his daily meeting with national security adviser M.K. Narayanan, Intelligence Bureau director Rajiv Mathur and home secretary G.K. Pillai.

Almost instantaneously Chidambaram assumed charge, first by cancelling all his day’s engagements and then by turning the home ministry into an operational control headquarters. “The news was conveyed to the Centre quite late and to the air force even later,” a home ministry source said.

Chidambaram would later hold four more meetings with the Intelligence Bureau chief and Pillai.

The post-mortem of the delay in communication was, sensibly, left for a later date as the home minister co-ordinated with the civil aviation, defence and external affairs ministries to take charge.

The Andhra chief secretary, who was earlier unavailable to home ministry officials on phone, was directed to set up another control room in Hyderabad.

Chidambaram also coordinated with science and technology minister Prithviraj Chavan to synchronise operations. Chavan would later seek help of the Indian Space Research Organisation to send its aircraft for thermal imaging of the Nallamala forests in search of the missing copter.

Within no time, the entire government machinery, both in Delhi and Hyderabad, was working seamlessly and in sync.

Air force aircraft took off from Bareilly, jetting all across southern Andhra Pradesh, the US was contacted for possible help with satellite imaging, paramilitary and army units, including special units trained in anti-Naxalite operations were scrambled on the ground.

“A central control room and a state control room with sustained communication is the ideal structure,” said a Chidambaram aide. “That is defined already, but someone needs to take charge and take hard decisions,” he said.

Hard decisions there were. Sharma, who told news channels that the chief minister was “safe and sound” was taken to task, sources said. Asked why and how he thought that Reddy was safe Sharma apparently said he learnt it through the Sakshi television channel, a channel owned by YSR’s son.

An Air Traffic Control operator in Andhra similarly gave out information that Reddy’s chopper was safe. Shockingly, the operator had said it on the basis of television reports. “He must now be cowering under some airplane after the dressing down from home ministry,” a source said.

The civil aviation ministry, too, got a dressing down perhaps because of the ATC operator and news reports.

Apparently, civil aviation minister Praful Patel, too, thought that Reddy was safe and the chopper had landed somewhere yesterday morning.

All information eventually flowed to North Block. Even minute details that 400 forest personnel, 500 coolies, 300 tribal police, six companies of CRPF, five columns (500 men) of the Madras Regiment and Gorkha Regiment and nine teams of Grey Hounds were scouring areas between Kurnool and Atmakur and Kurnool and Nandiyal.

Eventually, the chopper wreckage was found on a hillock near Nandiyal. This morning, it was only after the “visible and single channel of information” provided final evidence about the wreckage that Chidambaram officially confirm Reddy was dead.