RAISINA HILL (APRIL)

Amitabh Shukla

RAHUL

After Rahul Gandhi became the trustee of Jawahar Bhavan Trust, there was a lot of speculation in the Congress circles. It was said that the young leader wants the old guard of the party to retire from politics.

Three leaders, all in their late 70s, were out in the reshuffle of the trust which carries out philanthropic activities in the name of the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Arjun Singh, who has been left in the cold now after being dropped from the Union Cabinet in May 2009, has been eased out from the trust. Mohsina Kidwai, another member of the old guard and Makhan Lal Fotedar, a close confidante of Indira Gandhi and then Rajeev Gandhi too finds himself out of the coveted body.

What was more interesting was the replacement of Ahmed Patel, Political Secretary of Congress President Sonia Gandhi as the Secretary of the trust. He has been replaced by Moti Lal Vora, the Treasurer of the party. Patel, however, will continue to be the trustee.

The new entrant in the trust is Union Minister Mukul Wasnik, considered relatively young apart from Vora.

RAMESH

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has a penchant for controversy. He has already said that he only has the Prime Minister as his confidante in the Union Cabinet. Now he has publicly disowned the practice of wearing the traditional robe in convocation ceremonies.

He called as "barbaric colonial relics" the practice of wearing the traditional coloured robe at convocation ceremonies and publicly removed his own gown at one event during the convocation function of a university in Madhya Pradesh.

"I still have not been able to figure out after 60 years of Independence why we stick to this barbaric colonial relic," Ramesh said while addressing students at the seventh convocation of the Indian Institute of Forest Management.

No one for sure knows how will Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal react to the latest barb from Ramesh. On the Bt Brinjal issue, the minister had locked horns with Science and Technology Minister Prithviraj Chavan. There was a light hearted comment in the AICC when some Congress leaders asked whether the coats and gowns of the lawyers and Judges too was a colonial relic and should be done away with. The controversy will sure not die down soon.

GADKARI

BJP President Nitin Gadkari, an RSS confidante roped in to end the infighting in the party posed 14 questions to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on inflation, poverty etc. the other day.

Interestingly, none of the mainline media bothered to report the issue prominently as Gadkari is considered a lightweight in not only the BJP but also is not taken seriously in government and Congress circles.

“Had L K Advani even now or earlier Atal Bihari Vajpayee had written a letter to the PM, the entire media would have carried it prominently. It will take time for him to settle down and considered a serious politician,” remarked a Delhi BJP leader.

The Prime Minister too has not bothered to reply so far to the letter of Gadkari who is not a member of Parliament. If an MP writes a letter to the PM, the PMO invariably replies to it even though it might not act on the letter entirely.

Gadkari’s 14 questions were nevertheless important an concerned price rise, plight of the farmers and 'aam admi' and reasons behind its failure in curbing inflationary trends.

He asked a perfectly valid question as why inflation in India was at 11 per cent as against global inflation of 1 to 2 per cent. He pointed out that sugar prices in India is more than double and price of wheat was 80 per cent more than the price in other countries.

LALU

After Supreme Court gave relief to former Bihar chief minister and Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi in assets case tongues started wagging why it happened.

When Lalu was a part of the UPA, the CBI had gone slow in the case leading to his acquittal by a court in Patna. But when the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, a bete noire of Lalu and a friend turned foe, filed an appeal in the apex court, it held that the state government had no locus standi on the issue. The Yadav couple was accused of amassing assets worth Rs 46 lakh beyond their known sources of income when Prasad was the chief minister between 1990 and 1997.

Congress leaders say the party wants to keep its options on Lalu as it needs his support for the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Lok Sabha and possibly some kind of political arrangement in Bihar where the elections are scheduled for October-November this year.

AMAR

Expelled and disgraced from Samajwadi Party, Amar Singh wants a political space in the Congress. No wonder he has been praising Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi repeatedly giving the right signals to the party.

When the Amitabh Bachchan row broke out in which first Congress attacked the star and then toned down, Singh defended Sonia Gandhi saying he did not see her hand in hounding of the actor.

"Personally I have full faith in Sonia Gandhi and Rahul and I believe that this can never be done by them," Singh wrote in his blog on the controversy over Congress leaders objecting to Bachchan's presence at a government function.

Even as Amar Singh is sending the right signals, Congress is not amused and has not shown any interest in him. CWC member Satyavrat Chaturvedi has already said that Congress was not a dustbin. The party uses Chaturvedi now and then to attack Amar Singh.

(7.4.2010)