Delhi confidential: Koirala’s India link

Sushil Koirala was among those involved in planning the exercise and was arrested from Delhi.

Koirala’s India link

Sushil Koirala, who was elected Nepal Prime Minister on Monday, has an old India connection. In the early 1970s, a group of Nepali Congress rebels fighting an autocratic monarchy hijacked a Royal Nepal Airlines aircraft and landed it in Forbesganj, in Araria district of Bihar. Sushil Koirala was among those involved in planning the exercise and was arrested from Delhi. He was locked up first in Tihar Jail, then in Bhagalpur prison and other Bihar jails. He spent three years in jail, but remembers the time fondly as it coincided with the period when many Indian political activists, including incumbent Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, were also in prison during the JP movement.

In direct talks

In what put a question mark on the efficacy of the UPA government’s floor managers in Parliament, the Congress bigwigs have got involved in negotiating directly with the BJP for its support over crucial legislations. Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel and AICC general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh Digvijaya Singh were learnt to have met Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj last week over the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill. It is arguably the first time that Congress leaders who are not a part of the government have directly engaged the principal opposition party over legislative matters. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on his part, sought to break the ice by personally calling up top BJP leaders to invite them to a lunch meeting on Wednesday.

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Waiting game
The Aam Aadmi Party, it seems, is having second thoughts about its hurried style of functioning when it comes to its list of Lok Sabha candidates. With the February 10 deadline also having lapsed, the party, sources said, is biding its time so as to avoid the embarrassment of having to change its candidates at the last minute. For one, the BJP has still not revealed its card about Narendra Modi’s constituency. The AAP leaders also feel that the Congress may spring a last-minute surprise on Sonia Gandhi’s candidature. The AAP clearly does not want to repeat its mistake of the Delhi elections, when it ended up giving a virtual walkover to BJP’s CM candidate Harsh Vardhan in Krishna Nagar, thanks to its haste in announcing candidates.

River Sutra
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan called on former BJP Prime Minister A B Vajpayee to seek his blessings for having completed one of his ambitious projects of river-linking. The Chouhan government recently completed the Narmada and Shipra river-linking project, which is set to be formally inaugurated later this month. Chouhan also called on senior BJP leaders to invite them to the inuauguration. He is trying to get yoga guru Ramdev to attend the function too.

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