Felicitation or farewell?

Somebody snitched

Congress members of the Rajya Sabha were elated when they received a summons to 10 Janpath last week. But their jubilation was short-lived. Sonia Gandhi, who met the MPs in batches of ten, reprimanded them for not taking their duties as parliamentarians seriously. She had received complaints that the Congress MPs do not attend Parliament regularly and some were not present when their starred questions were taken up for discussion. The MPs are irked at being pulled up like errant school-boys and wonder why Lok Sabha MPs were not similarly summoned for a dressing down. Many suspect Jairam Ramesh, a fellow Rajya Sabha member and Sonia Gandhi’s speech-writer, of carrying tales to 10 Janpath in order to earn brownie points.

The Congress high command is more concerned about the Upper House since most of the Opposition’s parliamentary talent is in the Rajya Sabha. But Lok Sabha MPs will also be called shortly, according to sources.

Making way for Sonia

After the Congress victory last year, everyone assumed that Sonia Gandhi would be sworn in as Prime Minister. Subramaniam Swamy had raised the legal argument with President Abdul Kalam that she could not be made Prime Minister under the Indian Citizenship Act. His contention was that under the rules of the Act, citizenship to people from other countries is given on the basis of reciprocity. Italian law entitles only an Italian-born citizen to stand for Parliament or become Prime Minister.

A year later, no such legal hurdle (whether it was a valid point would have been eventually decided by the courts) exists to bar naturalised Indian citizens from being elected PM or an MP. The Act has been amended to remove this clause. What is intriguing is that it was not the UPA government but the NDA government which passed the Bill at the fag end of its term. Though it was not notified at the time the government changed last May.

BJP and RSS circles are now involved in a blame game to discover how its own government went out of its way to make it easy for Sonia to assume political office. This is particularly embarrassing considering the BJP’s strong pronouncements on a naturalised rather than a natural-born citizen becoming the country’s PM. The Bill was sponsored by the Home Ministry after consultations with the Ministry of External Affairs. Ostensibly the amendment was to benefit the powerful NRI lobby which had petitioned L K Advani as Home Minister. Either nobody stopped to consider the implication of the amendment or else, as RSS chief K S Sudershan suspects, there was an enemy within.

All in the family

Surendera Singh was unquestionably Bansi Lal’s favorite son. The aging Haryana heavyweight was estranged for 14 years from his eldest son Ranbir Singh Mahindra, who had even contested against Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party. But last year, after Mahindra’s election as president of the Board of Cricket Control in India, there was a reconciliation between father and son, who are now both in the Congress. Although Lal wants Surendra’s daughter or his widow, Kiran Chaudhary, to contest from her father’s Tosham Assembly constituency, he has demanded that Ranbir, already an MLA, be appointed a minister in Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s Cabinet in place of Surendra.

Lull(oo) in storm

Although Laloo is getting increasingly worked up with Bihar Governor Buta Singh’s public pronouncement against the previous Rabri Government, the RJD has not formally requested for Buta Singh’s transfer. The reason is that whenever anyone in the RJD attacks Buta Singh, Ram Vilas Paswan accuses Laloo of being anti-Dalit, since Singh, like him, is a Dalit. Paswan’s smart tactics have inhibited Laloo from speaking out too openly against the Governor.

Mingling with the enemy

Shared Pawar sticks out among the UPA allies by conspicuously mingling with the Congress’s political opponents without any fear of the consequences. He is not afraid to be seen in the company of Jayalalithaa and Chandrashekhar. He spoke on Laloo’s behalf in the Bihar elections when the Congress teamed up with Ram Vilas Paswan. And he has accepted an invitation from Bal Thackeray’s son, Udhav, to be present for the release of his book when he will share the dais with the Sena leader himself. After K Karunakaran’s stormy exit from the Congress, he made it a point to meet Pawar.