Friends again: Did they script it together?

Jethmalani promised to support Das but he also made it clear that he would support ‘‘other candidates who share my ideology in any part of India’’.

Jethmalani’s turn-around has raised several questions. For all his 40 years of friendship with Vajpayee, he has not spared the PM. Consider these latest examples:

• Just a week ago, Jethmalani faxed a 10-question list to newspapers, one of them doubting the Prime Minister’s ‘‘sound body and sound mind.’’

• Three days later, he was quoted in papers, saying threateningly, in reference to the Bofors charges against Sonia Gandhi, ‘‘If this goes on, then I also have a lot to say that will put the Prime Minister and his men in the dock.’’

That’s not all, last month, he said he was ‘‘totally disillusioned with the present regime.’’ And early this year, he had called the PM a ‘‘Dhritrashtra’’, referring to what he said was the Government’s harassment of Tehelka.

That’s why his latest change of heart is curious. As is the PM’s public appeal.

For, the Prime Minister is billed both as the leader and the message of the ruling NDA, and yet it is he who made an appeal to his opponent, in his own constituency. Not that the PM ran the risk of losing. In any case, the SP and the BSP were not backing him. The sari stampede in Lucknow has been a setback though the PM moved swiftly to control the damage.

Many suspect that both have come to an understanding since Vajpayee could not have risked his public request being spurned. The political grapevine is even agog with talk about a ministerial berth for Jethmalani again, if the NDA is back in power.