Jaswant Checks In

Already Singh has panned the fittings, the TV set and furniture in his new office which he termed tacky, and has commandeered his old sofas, tables and music system from across the road. He has also expressed unhappiness with the dim lighting in the corridors, the musty smell and the shabby state of the visitors’ room.

North Block officials are apprehensive that Singh, a strict disciplinarian, might impose the same restrictive parking rules which he had enforced in South Block where officials cannot park their cars close to the entrance and have perforce to trudge quite a distance to reach their offices.

Incidentally, Sinha has already flouted his predecessor’s injunction by parking his own car right at the main gate of South Block.

All Aboard

Since neither L K Advani nor Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi are known to be friendly towards the Reliance group, the fact that both men along with Keshubhai Patel made an unscheduled flight to Mumbai in a RAW aircraft to condole Dhirubhai Ambani’s death evoked much curiosity.

Advani’s gesture appears related to former Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel’s obduracy in refusing to accept a central ministership, indicating that he still nurses ambitions of ousting Modi.

Since Patel is an old friend of the Ambanis and Modi is not, the BJP leadership is anxious to ensure that Gujarat’s most influential industrial group does not take sides in this intra-party dispute.

The Congress, incidentally, is seriously contemplating appointing Shankersinh Vaghela as its Gujarat unit chief on the premise that it takes a former BJP man to know best how to trip up another sangh man. The crafty Modi, meanwhile, is utilising the services of Bhupendra Chudasama to lure back Vaghela’s fellow Khajurias, who had quit the BJP with him and joined the Congress.

Role Reversal

The change of guard at the MEA has led to a role reversal between the minister of external affairs and the foreign secretary. As minister Jaswant Singh called all the shots and his foreign secretaries seldom dared interject.

The last FS, Chokila Iyer, was so self effacing that she melted totally into the background, whether it was at the Agra summit or in Kazakhstan. The new FS, Kanwal Sibal, is assertive, articulate and opinionated with an anti-USA hang-up in the bargain, so it is probably just as well that Singh is no longer the minister.

Sinha, however, is content to allow Sibal in the driver’s seat, at least for the moment. While the new minister has barely interacted with the media, Sibal has been talking regularly to journalists and gives the impression that he is in control.

It was he who suggested that Sinha make his maiden foreign trip to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. And it is interesting to note that he is not accompanying his minister.

Forgotten Art

When 82-year-old P C Alexander put in his papers as governor of Maharashtra, the media speculated as to what position he would be awarded next on the assumption that nobody in India leaves office until he is physically ejected or espies better prospects.

Fortunately, there are still a few honourable exceptions. Last month the highly respected diplomat, S K Lambah, who was India’s special enjoy on Afghanistan, demitted office voluntarily and unobtrusively when he felt that the task he had been assigned was completed. Former MEA minister Jaswant Singh noted on the file, ‘‘It is a graceful offer. Which I will reluctantly accept.’’

Wooing the Emissary

Trinamool Congress MP Sudip Bandopadhyay has been regularly liaising with the NDA government on behalf of Mamata Banerjee, but of late the TC leader has also inducted Kolkata Mayor Subrata Mukherjee to be her representative.

It seems the BJP won over Bandopadhyay by offering him one of the two MoS positions they had reserved for Mamata’s party if she relented on the railway issue. When Mamata heard this, she gave Bandopadhyay a tongue lashing and made clear that she was the only one to decide on ministerial nominees.

Measure for Measure

The true measure of the extent to which L K Advani flexes his muscles as deputy prime minister will be the rise in the discomfort level of the PM’s Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra, whose clout extends much beyond his official position thanks to trust the PM reposes in him. Many believe that the hostility between the Advani and Vajpayee camps is largely the making of their respective lieutenants who have been stoking the factional fires.

Two days before Advani was formally installed as deputy prime minister, a newspaper claimed that the proposal to make a deputy PM had been nixed. Advani, suspecting the authoritative source from where the news emanated, noted sarcastically to a television correspondent that this talk of rival power centres where none existed came from the same source which in the first place had spread word that the deputy PM proposal had been shelved.

Illustrations by Ajit Kumar