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No Divine intervention

When additional secretary in the I T ministry S Laxminarayan’s name was mooted for a senior slot in the banking department there were many murmurs from his colleagues who felt they were far better qualified for the prestigious position. Bureaucratic grapevine had it that Laxminarayan was benefiting from his proximity to the Kanchi Shankaracharya, the government’s favourite godman at the moment.

The rumours were fueled because of the additional secretary’s recent letter to all senior government officials informing them of the Shankaracharya’s upcoming visit to Delhi. Laxminarayan urged his bureaucratic colleagues to ‘‘avail of the rare opportunity’’ of attending the godman’s discourse on the Gita at the Asiad village and be blessed by his holiness. The letter could well be considered inappropriate for a government servant in our secular democracy. Despite his efforts, Laxminarayan’s hope for transfer to the department of banking has not materialised.

Diplomatic passage

India’s Ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh’s term gets over in March next year and already several have an eye on the prestigious post. Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal who completes his tenure at the end of the year is considered the favourite among the contenders.

His advantage is that apart from being the boss of the MEA, he shares an excellent rapport with the PMO. The fact that Sibal, an unabashed Francophile is considered a US-baiter in some circles is not thought to be a handicap!

Cooks, barbers, PCC chiefs

Congress General Secretary Kamal Nath was appointed in charge of Tamil Nadu recently in the hope that he could bring about a reconciliation in the deeply-divided state unit where the Moopanar faction and the long-time Indira Gandhi-loyalists are at each other’s throats.

To mollify both sides, the party had appointed S Balakrishnan, formerly of the Moopanar Congress, as TNCC president, and E V K Elangovan from the original Congress as working president. Nath, after he took charge, formed a steering committee and hinted injudiciously at the possibility of bringing in a third person as president to end the stalemate.

Talking to media persons after the steering committee meet in Delhi, Nath justified an organisational revamp with the remark that different people were suited for different duties. As an analogy he noted that his driver might not make the best cook, his cook would not be suitable as a barber and so on.

A furious Balakrishnan shot off a letter to Sonia Gandhi offering to step down saying he felt deeply insulted being compared to a cook or a barber. Elangovan was equally angry at what he considered North India’s patronising attitude towards the South.

To restore peace, letters have been sent to both the state presidents assuring them that they will continue to hold office. Nath seems to have only deepened the divide at the state level.

Weighing his words

After RSS boss K S Sudershan’s warning that BJP members should not get caught in the personality politics cult but concentrate on ideology, Murli Manohar Joshi and Pramod Mahajan have stopped trying to fish in troubled waters.

Most cabinet ministers were in any case anxious to avoid getting caught in the cross-fire between Vajpayee and Advani. A Rajya Sabha MP whom Joshi accused of carrying mischievous tales from one camp to another has left for abroad.

A rattled Venkaiah Naidu has clearly decided to weigh his words very carefully before venturing on the ticklish subject of the party leadership. At the Chintan Baithak, Naidu compared Vajpayee and Advani to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. But he made clear that he was not identifying either of the Big Two with a specific stalwart from the party’s past. Vajpayee and Advani have both inherited the virtues of the two founding fathers of the Jana Sangh, he explained.

Wrong priorities

There was a major lacuna in the media arrangements for L K Advani’s recent trip to the USA and London. While the DPM garnered enormous publicity back home, there was practically no mention of him in the media of the countries he visited.

In the US, Advani’s staff shortsightedly cancelled interviews at the last moment to the Al Jazeera network, noted Middle East columnist Amir Taheri and an NRI US-based radio programme, because Advani could not spare the time.