Common cause

Of birds and proverbs

Commerce Secretary Deepak Chatterjee must be regretting that he did not pay heed to the old adage that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Wanting to have his cake and eat it too, he got himself appointed as Chairperson of the Competition Commission for a five-year term, but insisted on completing his tenure as secretary first. A PIL in the courts and a change in government derailed his plans for a post-retirement sinecure. Similarly, Revenue Secretary Veenita Rai lost the job of Chairperson of the Pension Regulatory Development Authority. Instead of taking up her new post full time, she opted for dual charge, assuming that this way the three-year tenure in her new job would start only after her retirement in September.

In contrast, Vinod Dhal appointed as a member of the Competition Commission was more savvy. Last year, when he was expected to assume charge, he used the pretext that Chatterjee was prevaricating joining as Chairman to claim that it was not feasible for the commission to function without a chairperson. He took on the post of OSD in the Company Affairs Ministry temporarily. However, when Dhal got wind that the commission formation was being questioned in court, he changed his tune and produced post haste a legal opinion to state there was nothing untoward in a commission functioning without a chairperson. He promptly took up his new charge. The early bird was the only one to get the worm.

Read my lips

The secret of Leader of Lok Sabha Pranab Mukherjee’s remarkable survival in the Congress—he first became a minister during Indira Gandhi’s time and is the virtual number two in the present Cabinet—is that the seasoned politician and draftsman never speaks out of turn. His measured words do not give any scope for his enemies to pick holes. At an interaction with women journalists at the Indian Women’s Press Corps last week, Mukherjee was at his vintage best.

On Arjun Singh’s rhetoric on the RSS, Mukherjee’s comment was: ‘‘I neither subscribe nor oppose.’’ Asked whether he had provided a life saver to Amarinder Singh, he retorted: ‘‘I don’t know that his life was in danger in the first place.’’ Questioned about the dual command in the Government between Sonia Gandhi and the PM, Mukherjee explained earnestly that all decisions were taken by the Cabinet, so ‘‘Where is the question of people going to Mrs Sonia Gandhi?’’

Didn’t he feel he had missed the bus by not being made Prime Minister? ‘‘Becoming Prime Minister does not depend on an individual’s desire,’’ he retorted. Asked what was the qualification to become PM, he replied, ‘‘There is only one criteria and one qualification to be PM. That is acceptability to the party.’’ (Didn’t he mean party leader?)

Who’s in command?

The Opposition is slightly puzzled about the chain of command in the Congress since Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad does not really act as pointsman on parliamentary issues. Meetings are generally held not in Azad’s room but in the office of the Leader of the Lok Sabha, Pranab Mukherjee. On the issue of the formation of parliamentary sub-committees, it was Speaker Somnath Chatterjee who invited Advani for discussions. The next day the Opposition Leader was called to Race Course Road to get a briefing on Manipur from the Prime Minister, Mukherjee and Shivraj Patil. After the meeting, Azad was summoned to join the gathering for finalising the names of the parliamentary committee members.

Pre-emptive defence

Congresspersons have been trumpeting that former defence minister George Fernandes would be one of the prime targets of the new government. But Fernandes met the threat head on by writing to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh immediately after he took office, requesting that since the Congress had been perjuring him throughout the election campaign calling him ‘‘coffin chor’’, the PM should inquire into the matter. He asked that a decision on his guilt or innocence should be taken within two weeks since all relevant papers are with the Ministry. Singh has forwarded the letter to the Defence Ministry, but there has been no response so far.

In the Tehelka Commission, Fernandes is already in the clear; Justice Phukan had exonerated Fernandes of any impropriety in his February report.

Power fluctuation

The power in the BJP central office at Ashoka Road went off briefly while the media was assembled for the daily briefing. Party president M Venkaiah Naidu, never one to resist a quip, observed when the electricity returned: ‘‘Power comes, power goes.’’ Naidu was speaking in the context of the rewriting of history books, implying that the Congress should not assume it would be in power permanently.