In cuck(lal)oo land

The passenger, who along with his three companions had kept the whole aircraft waiting, was television actor Feroze Khan who had once starred as Arjun in the serial Mahabharat and was campaigning for the RJD. The woman journalist gave the actor a piece of her mind when he finally showed up. Far from being contrite, the actor abused her and delayed the plane still further by demanding that the airport manager be summoned. This took quite a while as the door of the plane had been shut and the aircraft steps had to be lowered once again.

The actor questioned the manager menacingly. The petrified airport employee practically touched the actor’s feet and assured him that he was not the reason for the flight delay. The journalist remained unconvinced and her suspicions were confirmed when many of the crew members thanked her privately for taking up cudgels against what has become a customary nuisance for the flying public in Laloo’s land.

Food for thought

A correspondent who accompanied Laloo Prasad Yadav for a day on the campaign trail was struck by how little he ate. Laloo restricted himself to raisins and a handful or two of channa with gur. Despite his disciplined eating habits, Laloo still sports a noticeable paunch.

In contrast, his rival Ram Vilas Paswan displayed a hearty appetite. Paswan started the day with a home-cooked meal of potatoes and chapatis. He happily sampled the various sweetmeats offered to him along the way. He polished off a tiffin of meat curry prepared by his wife for lunch. By the end of the afternoon he had also tucked into a chicken dish. If Paswan manages to still keep a trim figure, it is because he is a fitness freak and has even installed a treadmill at his house.

Kamikaze actions

The combative Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury is fighting on so many fronts that bets are on in political circles as to whether she will last another six months in office. On the one hand, the bureaucrats in Chowdhury’s ministry are up in arms. She has transferred her very efficient and upright secretary Uma Pillai, stripped joint secretary Amitabh Kant of the charge of ITDC, transferred 16 ITDC general managers and an equal number of junior officers. All engineers in the divisional headquarters at Delhi have been posted out without any reciprocal transfers to fill the vacancies.

Chowdhury has even flexed her muscles with her fellow ministers. Recently, she demanded that the upmarket Santushti shopping complex which is on Defence Ministry land should be taken over by the Tourism Ministry. Pranab Mukherjee snubbed her gently by suggesting that officials from the respective ministries could decide the question; ministers did not have to get involved. The Finance Ministry dug in its heels and refused to clear her cellphone bills of Rs 1.3 lakh for five months since a ceiling of Rs 2,500 per month has been fixed. Earlier Chowdhury had differences with Jaipal Reddy’s Culture Ministry over the Taj festival in UP. In the Home Ministry, Shivraj Patil has not taken kindly to her constant badgering of the immigration staff.

Quid Pro Deo

Pramod Mahajan claims that the fact that Ashish Deora, Director of IOL Broadband, received a windfall from Reliance Infocomm when he was minister for communications was a mere coincidence. The BJP leader’s defence is that no one can prove any quid pro quo. But by a remarkable coincidence, this column back in 2001 reported about the very same Deora who had then come to the financial aid of Mahajan’s son Rahul.

After Mahajan stepped down as information and broadcasting minister, it was discovered that Rahul’s company, Integral Production, owed Doordarshan Rs 8.45 crore. In January 2001, one Jai Dev, a social worker, filed a PIL in the Delhi High Court complaining that Rahul’s firm had not paid its dues to Prasar Bharati. The court served a notice and Deora, whose company was then called India Online, made several trips to the commercial wing of Prasar Bharati at Mandi House to discuss how Integral Production could clear its dues. Within a week of the court notice, Rs 4 crore was paid to Prasar Bharati. The petitioner Jai Dev moved an application requesting that details of payment should be made available to court and charged that it was in fact India Online which had paid up on behalf of Integral Productions.

Banking on it

Economist and IFS officer Jamini Bhagwati was so confident that he would be appointed the Chairman of SEBI that he cut short his stint with the World Bank in Washington. Bhagwati was the Finance Ministry’s nominee for the SEBI post and his candidature reportedly had the backing of Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia as well. The PMO, however, rejected all three names on the panel sent by the Finance Ministry and appointed UTI Chairman M Damodaran instead. Damodaran’s appointment adds one more name to the growing list of Keralites in key positions in the current government.