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Speculation is mounting about a Cabinet reshuffle shortly and once again, the Finance Ministry is in the news. Human Resource Development Mi...

Speculation is mounting about a Cabinet reshuffle shortly and once again, the Finance Ministry is in the news. Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi8217;s backers in the RSS are believed to have started a campaign to get him into North Block. They are drawing strength from Finance Minister Jaswant Singh8217;s reported desire to go back to his first love, foreign affairs. Joshi would be the first to say that changes in the Cabinet are the Prime Minister8217;s prerogative, but his loyalists maintain he is not averse to a change of portfolio. He fancies himself as an amateur economist, of the swadeshi variety of course, and has always been keen on finance. What8217;s added grist to the rumour mill is the frequent meetings Joshi8217;s been having of late with economists from the Delhi School of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University8217;s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning. Other unusual names in Joshi8217;s appointments diary recently were Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan. In fact, the grapevine buzz is that Joshi8217;s secret meeting with Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra a couple of weeks ago was actually sounding out exercise about the possibility of Jaswant Singh going back to the Foreign Office. The odd man out in this game of musical chairs is External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha. Will it be Jharkhand as Chief Minister for him or will he have to make do with HRD?

Time for a Front

A development which went unnoticed but has huge portents for next year8217;s Lok Sabha polls is the outcome of the Chiraigaon assembly bye-election in Uttar Pradesh. The constituency is a Thakur-dominated Samajwadi Party citadel but the seat was won by the BSP this time. Significantly, the BJP and BSP tried out an electoral understanding for the first time, as a sort of litmus test for future polls. The BJP did not put up candidate and the allies came up trumps. Despite a heavyweight SP campaign by Mulayam Singh Yadav, son Akhilesh Singh Yadav, Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh and actor-Lok Sabha MP Raj Babbar, their party candidate lost by nearly 4,000 votes. Obviously the controversy over the arrest of Thakur Raja Bhaiyya, for which Chief Minister Mayawati received flak from all sides including the BJP, made no difference. Maybe the SP and Congress will have to think harder about a pre-poll alliance or seat adjustment if the BJP and BSP decide to fight the next polls together. The Congress candidate polled almost 7,000 votes. Add this to the SP nominee8217;s votes and he would have been the victor.

Changing China

Members of the Indian delegation accompanying Prime Minister A B Vajpayee to China really had to dust the cobwebs from their mind. Convinced that the Big Brother syndrome persists in China even in this era of liberalisation and modernisation, one official immediately became suspicious when he found his Chinese interpreter making calls on her cell phone at the end of each outing. He politely asked her whether she had to report to someone about his movements. Her surprise at the query gave way to amusement when she understood what he was implying. And she laughingly disabused him. No reporting, she told him, she was simply talking to her boyfriend to tell him all the fascinating things she was discovering about Indians.

Blue pencil MPs

Never before have so many journalists lobbied so hard for a nomination to the Rajya Sabha. At the last count, there were a dozen hopefuls, including editors of several prominent publications. Actually, there is no seat earmarked for the media as such. It8217;s just that eminent journalist Kuldip Nayyar is retiring at the end of a high-profile stint in the House of Elders. And there8217;s a rush to grab that seat. Several aspirants were in the media team that accompanied Vajpayee to China but unfortunately for them, journalists were denied access to the PM and his party this time. Someone nastily suggested that it was done specifically to stop them from lobbying on the trip. The media-driven BJP leadership is said to be so reluctant to pick one at the cost of the others that it is toying with the idea of excluding the media altogether this time. Maybe next time?