Fly on the wall

Scindia's ascentEyebrows were raised in the Congress when Sonia Gandhi picked Madhavrao Scindia to represent her in Gujarat last week. She...

Scindia8217;s ascent
Eyebrows were raised in the Congress when Sonia Gandhi picked Madhavrao Scindia to represent her in Gujarat last week. She was to board the special aircraft to survey the drought-affected areas at 8.00am on Wednesday when she fell ill. She chose Scindia to go. Party bigwigs are wondering about the choice. Normally, it is Pranab Mukherjee, Motilal Vora, Prabha Rao or an ageing leader who represents the Congress president. Secondly, Scindia being the deputy leader of the CPP in the Lok Sabha, has to be present in the House in the absence of the leader.

Party-watchers feel that the development indicates that Arjun Singh has lost out the race.

Insider trading
Remember N. Seshagiri Rao, DG, NICNET and secretary of the Task Force on IT which cleared the Sankhya Vahini project at its first meeting itself on September 5, 1998?

It was Andhra Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu who presided over this meeting and not External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh. The moment Union Cabinet cleared the Sankhya Vahini project on January 19 this year, Rao applied for pre-mature retirement. He told IT Minister Pramod Mahajan that he wanted to settle down in Karnataka after retirement as his mother was unwell. Mahajan agreed. The moment his request was accepted, he sought the government8217;s permission again to join a private company. The company, if you haven8217;t guessed, is Dishnet owned by Shiva Shankaran, a personal friend of V.S. Arunachalam and Raj Reddy the promoters of the Sankhya Vahini project.

Balbir Punj, the newly elected BJP Rajya Sabha MP, has also joined the company8217;s subsidiary in TV business, thanks to S. Gurumurthy of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. So what if the RSS is opposed to Sankhya Vahini?

A tale of two sons
If the scion of the Gandhi dynasty, Rahul, has opted out of politics to settle down in London with his Columbian girlfriend and a plum MNC job, former Prime Minister V.P. Singh8217;s son has decided to step into his father8217;s shoes. He had quit his job with an international bank and was working as a finance consultant. Now, Ajeya Singh has decided to take care of his ailing father who is out on the streets defending slum-dwellers. Ajeya8217;s formal launch has not been decided as yet but he will assist his father in his political activities.

Rahul, meanwhile, wants to fix a date for his marriage. Now that Priyanka is pregnant, she cannot travel and Sonia would like the marriage to be performed according to Indian tradition. Hence the delay.

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Misleading the Minister
Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav seems to be on a warpath in the ministry as he wants to break the nexus between the private operators and bureaucrats. First, he took to task all those bureaucrats who said that a number of international airlines have offered more than 25 per cent equity to others. When confronted by him, they could find two Air Lanka which has given 40 per cent equity to UAE and a south China airline. He is even planning to issue memo to those who misled him on the foreign equity holding pattern. He has sent faxes to all foreign embassies here to get first-hand information on the issue.

Rich defaulters
Do you know that the country8217;s top 100 Income-tax defaulters alone owe Rs 17,380 crore to the government? If the total IT outstanding is calculated, it runs into over Rs 50,000 crore. Then you have bank defaulters who owe an astonishing Rs 52,000 crore. Even the cash-rich Board for Control of Cricket in India owes the government Rs 63 crore.