Durable bhai sahib

Some 1,100 IAS, IPS and PCS employees have been arbitrarily moved around from one post to another during Mayawati’s mercurial 15-month reign.

Which is why people in UP are amazed at the extraordinary longevity of Mayawati’s principal secretary Pannalal Puniah, who held the same position in her last government.

Puniah, a dalit from Haryana, had served as principal secretary to Mayawati’s arch rival Mulayam Singh Yadav as well, but this has not lessened the Chief Minister’s faith in him.

On Raksha Bandhan day, along with her BJP friend Lalji Tandon, Mayawati made it a point to tie a rakhi on Puniah whom she refers to as bhai saheb.

Official cow count

While the VHP creates a hue and cry over the continued slaughter of cows within India, it is less concerned over the fact that more than a million Indian cows are illegally smuggled into Bangladesh with the connivance of the authorities.

The export of cows across the West Bengal border is done with the full knowledge of both the BSF and the Bangladesh Rifles. The cows are brought from Punjab, Haryana and India’s hinterland and dispatched through designated corridors at the border. Powerful syndicates are involved in the operation.

If the VHP posts a picket it will witness a regular stream of trucks packed with emaciated cattle.

The trade is so well-entrenched that at the Bangladesh end customs charges 500 taka per head of cattle and, according to official figures, the country collects around 500 million taka annually from this cess.

The figure of a million cow does not take into account the large number of cattle which cross the border clandestinely without paying the tax.

Uncommon touch

Laloo Prasad Yadav was such a hit in Pakistan that people mobbed him wherever he went and some even came down from Peshawar to Lahore to get a glimpse of him. Laloo’s deliberately conceived simpleton act provided a few of Pakistan’s elite an opportunity to sneer at the calibre of Indian politicians.

But Laloo’s antics endeared him to the masses, resentful of a feudal set-up in which only landlords, religious fanatics and sophisticated rich men can rise in politics. The success of Laloo in democratic India was a source of admiration and inspiration.

In the dog house

Leader of the RJD in the Lok Sabha, Raghuvansh Prasad, has a peculiar problem. He offered to keep his son-in-law’s pet dog for six months while the latter was away. Problem is that the spirited canine has been trained as a guard dog and takes a nip at the ankle of any unfamiliar presence in the house.

Since the hospitable Prasad keeps an open house in Delhi for his constituents from Vaishali, many visitors have got bitten. And word has spread back home in Bihar that visiting Prasad’s Delhi residence is hazardous.

Left-hand complement

While the waiver of a whopping Rs 1.13-crore custom duty on cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s Ferrari was done in the wink of an eye courtesy Pramod Mahajan, the commerce ministry has been mulling for a while over a legitimate request from the Taj Hotels to import a top-of-the-line Mercedes after payment of the requisite customs duty.

The reason for holding back the limousine is that it is a left-hand drive while cars in India are expected to be right hand drive. But exceptions have been made in the past, particularly for Indian diplomats returning from overseas duty.

When a complement of top officials of the Tata group came to the commerce ministry to personally plead the case for the import of the Mercedes, it dawned on officials in Udyog Bhavan that the car was meant for no ordinary Tata executive. Tata chairman Ratan Tata, after all, is a left-hander.

Today’s Outlook

There is a footnote to the story, mentioned in these columns a fortnight back about the oversized billboards of rival magazines, India Today and Outlook, placed on adjacent gates in Delhi’s Nizamuddin (East) colony. The advertisements had upset several environmentally-conscious residents.

The Outlook welcome board, which was installed to counter a similar India Today sign board, mysteriously disappeared within a few days of its appearance. The advertisement was taken down in broad daylight without any protest from the colony’s chowkidars who assumed it was an authorised removal.

Outlook magazine has registered an FIR of theft with the Delhi police. Editor Vinod Mehta says darkly, ‘‘I have my suspicions who took it off’’ but is unwilling to elaborate.