Covert operation at Delhi Gymkhana

Prasad, whose USP is that he is a serving secretary, has already informed his minister Praful Patel of his election plans. But now, he is facing up to a misinformation campaign—a device that, incidentally, is the forte of the country’s dirty tricks department that Dulat, as IB chief, once headed. So the first rumour that did the rounds was that Prasad is retiring on September 30 and cannot do anything for the club—the fact is he retires on January 31, 2007. The other rumour involves a 1969-batch IAS officer, who has been caught in a sting operation in one of Delhi’s five-star hotels. Prasad, meanwhile, is prepared for the worst.

‘Visionary’ Laloo and ‘Able leader’ Paswan

The battle for Bihar is now being fought in newspapers, with leaders using their respective ministries to issue advertisements celebrating their achievements. RJD leader Laloo Prasad Yadav got a headstart as his Railway Ministry started issuing ads nearly two months ago. His LJP rival Ram Vilas Paswan was a little late, as he was laid up with indifferent health. Now, he has directed PSUs under his Steel Ministry to get going. So we have one advertisement praising a benign-looking Laloo as a ‘‘visionary, who scripted the financial turnaround of Indian railways,’’ and SAIL and Kribhco, claiming great achievements under the ‘‘able leadership’’ of Paswan. Anyway, the Bihar results will show whether the route to 1, Anne Marg, is via railways or steel. But is Nitish Kumar feeling left out? Watch this space.

Did Pak Babur come via China?

Pakistan test-fired its first 500-km cruise missile Babur last week. Though Delhi ostensibly was unperturbed, it was convinced that the Pakistani missile is Chinese-born. Last month, when PM Manmohan Singh went to the US, the Americans informed India that they were concerned about any sharing of top-end military technology with Pakistan as the chances of it being passed on to China were very high. The Americans said they had evidence that Pakistanis passed on an unexploded Tomahawk cruise missile—it mistakenly landed up in North-West Frontier Areas during the attack on terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 1998—to China. The upshot: Pakistan will not get the top-end F-16 fighters, unlike India.

Visa on arrival? Pak yet to arrive

This was one CBM that clearly showed India’s willingness to think differently in building relations with Pakistan. When Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran announced that India will grant visa-on-arrival at Wagah to Pakistani citizens above the age of 65 and children below 12, it was the first time New Delhi had extended this facility to any country.

This was eight months ago, and there was considerable excitement in Pakistan as India began preparations to translate its New Year’s gift to its neighbour into a reality. Then, despite reluctance from various quarters, the CBM was implemented with special counters being set up—open on Mondays and Thursdays—for this purpose at Wagah by March.

But they are still to see a Pakistani avail this facility, so far. Reports are that Pakistani Rangers refuse to let anyone cross the Wagah without a valid visa. And though the matter has been taken up officially with Islamabad, the enthusiasm seems to have dimmed at Wagah.

It is now left for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to raise the bar when he meets Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York. But with so much on the agenda, will the PM find time for this?

Karachi D-Day for Foreign Secy

Unlike Pakistan, which is scouting for properties to house a Consulate at Mumbai, India is in a much better position, concentrating on doing up its Karachi facility for the year-end opening. According to the timeline agreed between PM Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, the two consulates should be opened by December.

With the D-day fast approaching, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran will use his visit to Islamabad on August 17-19—to attend the SAARC Standing Committee meeting—and make a brief stopover at Karachi to inspect the work done so far. While the official line is that there are no flights out of Lahore on that day, the buzz is that Saran wanted to take a look at how matters were progressing.

Meanwhile, Pakistan appears to have finalised a site somewhere in the Santa Cruz area of Mumbai. But this is for building a permanent consulate. Last heard, VHP leader Ashok Singhal’s brother Vivek was in the reckoning with his space in Mittal Chambers despite pressure from hardliners.

Divergent tracks on the coal route

There seems to be a rift between the Minister of State for Coal, D Narayana Rao, and the ministry secretary Prakash C Parakh, who has gone on leave since last Tuesday. While the official line is the usual ‘‘no comment’’, the story doing the rounds is that the official could not cope with the minister’s ‘‘style of functioning’’. Sources say the differences centre around some policy issues. As things stand, the only thing common between the minister and the secretary are their links with Andhra Pradesh. The minister is from that state and the IAS officer is from the AP cadre.

Family drama in the House

Ektaa Kapoor should have been there. Nothing in her K serials can quite match the family drama that gripped the Lok Sabha last week when Maneka Gandhi rose to speak on the adjournment motion on the Nanavati report. She addressed the House but the target was clearly a grim-faced Sonia Gandhi. Maneka, who famously walked out of Indira Gandhi’s house much before she was slain, lashed out at the Congress for besmirching Indira’s memory. Indira Gandhi, she said, was ‘‘a true nationalist’’ who refused to remove her Sikh bodyguards despite being asked to do so. ‘‘Did we honour this attitude of hers by what was done by the ruling party after she died? In the memory of a woman who refused even to think of Sikhs as separate from her, what did the ruling party do?’’ That was not all. She recalled her visit to Amethi as ‘‘ a child of 28’’ and the ubiquitous slogan on the walls: ‘Beti hai sardaar ki, desh ki gaddar ki’. When she asked the villagers if they could say this ‘‘about Sanjay Gandhi’s wife’’, they reportedly answered: ‘‘It is not us, it is the people of the Congress party who come and write it in the night.’’

Her speech was heard in silence but tension, like static, crackled between the two Gandhi bahus. Sonia sat impassive but refused to look Maneka in the eye, unamused by this episode of ‘Maneka bhi kabhi bahu thi’.

Spotting the real 24 Karat

A joke doing the rounds in Parliament corridors these days is CPM MP Nilotpal Basu is the next Big B—or rather the character Bachchan essayed in the 1973 Amitabh-Jaya starrer Abhimaan. Basu, as leader of the CPM in Rajya Sabha, seeks and gets a lot of media attention. Reporters often run after him for a quote or quip. But not, alas, for long, fear fellow MPs. Remember Abhimaan, one of them said. Amitabh was the singing star who was unceremoniously eclipsed when wife Jaya rose to fame. The same fate awaits Basu when his media-savvy seniors Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury are sworn into the Upper House next week. The real suspense, though, is who will finally emerge as the Jaya Bhaduri—Karat or Yechury?

Tailpiece

The other day in Lok Sabha, when JD(U) MP Prabhunath Singh rose to make a special mention, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee asked, ‘‘ It is about Prithviraj Chauhan, isn’t it?’’ Sonia Gandhi immediately looked around to see if the Minister of State in the PMO (Prithviraj Chavan) was around. Only to realise that the Prithviraj in question was the medieval Delhi ruler who was defeated by the armies of Mohammad Ghori.