Maya Memsaab

According to the Congress grapevine, Mayawati was more than cordial but she didn’t say a word about sharing seats. And at her press conference two days later, she dealt the second blow by saying no to alliances. From biting their nails, Congress leaders are now scratching their heads wondering how to crack such seeming whimsicality. Maybe the Congress and the BJP should compare notes on the woes of coalition politics.

Party Hopping

The BJP’s Mamata headaches continue. The Trinamool Congress chief’s erstwhile lieutenant Sudip Bandhopadhyay wants to jump ship and shift to the BJP. He’s been knocking on BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan’s door asking for a ticket for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Ever since he attempted to break Mamata’s party during her standoff with the BJP, he’s been persona non grata in the Trinamool. And Mamata has made it quite clear that she doesn’t intend to give him a party nomination this time.

Unfortunately for Bandhopadhyay, while the BJP was readily flirting with him when it was engaged in a tug-of-war with Mamata over her Cabinet berth, things have changed. Now the BJP doesn’t want to do anything to rock its alliance with the Trinamool. Mamata has warned the BJP to stay away from Bandhopadhyay and not interfere in her party tussles. Will Congress be the next stop for this former Youth Congress leader?

Gifting the Taj

• Now that the thaw has set in with Pakistan, love is in the air. And none other than saffron hardliner Murli Manohar Joshi decided to say it with a replica of the Taj Mahal. That was his gift to Attar-ur-Rahman, Advisor on Science and Technology to the Pakistan Prime Minister, who came visiting last week.

When asked why he had decided to present a model of the Taj to his guest from Pakistan, Joshi waxed eloquent about it being a symbol of love and friendship. It’s a different matter that Shah Jahan was driven by romantic love. Joshi said a tabletop Taj was his standard gift to friends from Pakistan. In this case, there was an additional bond that the HRD Minister insisted on pointing out. Both he and Rahman were born in Delhi.

Winds of Change

• Two prominent bureaucrats of the present dispensation will be bowing out this summer. One is Additional Secretary in the PMO, Ashok Saikia, who is off to the Philippines to join the Asian Development Bank as India’s Executive Director.

The other is Managing Director, Indian Airlines, Sunil Arora. This Rajasthan cadre IAS officer will be making his way to Washington where he’s been appointed Minister (Economic) in the Indian Embassy. It’s a post reserved for the IAS, controlled by the Finance Ministry.

Nath’s Triumph

Congress leader Kamal Nath may be facing problems striking the right caste alliance in his home constituency of Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, but he’s managed to pull off a respectable deal for his party from the DMK in Tamil Nadu. With Manmohan Singh striking the soft note and Nath playing the tough man, the two squeezed ten seats out of wily DMK leader M Karunanidhi and the rising star in the Dravidian party, Dayanidhi Maran, the late Murasoli Maran’s son.

Congress sources feel seven of the ten are winning seats. The loss of Pondicherry was a major blow but the Congress has decided to brave it in this tiny Union Territory on its own. Its sitting MP, M O H Farooq, will contest against the PMK which was allotted the seat by the DMK.

Nevertheless, Nath is feeling quite triumphant these days. The tie-up in TN is his second success in alliance politics with an NDA partner, the first being with the Trinamool Congress during the last West Bengal Assembly elections.