Nobody is more surprised than the saffron crowd by the RSS decision to permit three of its members to travel to Islamabad next month for the Indo-Pak talk shop organised by the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA). Of course, the Sangh has carefully distanced itself as an organisation and the proposed delegates are at pains to emphasise that they are going in their ‘‘individual capacity’’. Interestingly, the initial response is believed to have been quite enthusiastic. SAFMA sent a feeler through Pondicherry Governor K.R. Malkani, one of the few BJPwallahs associated with past Indo-Pak jamborees. Malkani immediately shot off a letter to RSS chief K.S. Sudershan who personally got in touch with SAFMA representatives for more details.Government sources confessed that they were taken aback when the RSS decided to nominate an office-bearer, Madan Das Devi, as its official representative to the conference. But 24 hours later, there was a change of heart. Apparently, the Sangh leadership had second thoughts about the message that would have gone to its constituency if the organisation formally participated in a dialogue on the other side of the border, even at the Track II level. Yet, the desire to hear what the neighbours have to say in the wake of the Afghan and Iraq wars was too much. As a compromise, it has chosen three persons loosely connected with the world of journalism to go, but without the RSS tag. One of them happens to be the former spokesman for the Sangh, M.G. Vaidya. The others, as conveyed to the organisers, are Muzaffar Hussain from Mumbai and K.P. Agarwal from Lucknow.Cong’s power woes: Different voicesIt was always the BJP that was accused of speaking in two voices. Yet, now the Congress seems to be guilty of the same offence. Just the other day, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh solemnly assured his Assembly that the State had overcome its power problems and is no longer importing it from friendly Congress-run neighbours. At almost exactly the same moment, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit announced in her Assembly that her government was selling 100 MW of power per day to its Madhya Pradesh counterpart. Now, where does the truth lie? We’ll probably find out only after the November elections.Fighting for coalition dharmaCabinet aspirants in the Trinamool Congress are counting the days to the end of the monsoon session of Parliament in the hope that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee will finally keep his promise of inducting them into his government. But TC’s tempestuous chief, Mamata Banerjee, has got caught somewhere between coalition dharma and rebel troubles. She’s insisting that she be treated at par with the other NDA allies and be allowed to choose her nominees in the Cabinet. That means keeping dissident Sudip Bandhopadhyay out.The BJP is equally insistent that she’s lost the right to invoke coalition dharma. She’s walked out of the NDA twice, once to join hands with the enemy camp, the Congress. That puts her in a different category. The battle of wills continues.Mission impossible: A house for J PWhether the Congress likes it or not, the ICCR Centre in Washington will be named after its bete noir in 1977, Jay Prakash Narayan. Although there were suggestions from RSS enthusiasts to give the honour to Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mookherjee, the committee overseeing the JP centenary celebrations has prevailed. The problem is to find a suitable building in Washington. The Ministry of External Affairs has sanctioned Rs 25 crore (approximately US$ 5 million) for an outright purchase but, despite the generous budget, the process is degenerating into a comedy of errors.A property was identified in the heart of Washington and negotiations had started when someone objected saying the building looked too much like a church. It turns out that it was actually a church, now abandoned and derelict. The look was too much to stomach so it was decided to go in for major structural alterations. Then, the embassy in Washington discovered that the old church has been classified as a heritage building and its facade cannot be changed. In the meantime, the building has been sold and the ICCR has been left stranded because an alternative property has yet to be identified. Now it’s racing against time because it wants to open the Centre in September when Vajpayee will be in the United States for the United Nations General Assembly Meet. The way things are going, it may have to settle for a rented house, at least as a stop gap.
