Meanwhile

It started as a tiff over appointments in the recently created Commission and ended in her ordering the wholesale transfer of the department to the Northeast. The badly bruised Commissioner is quite bewildered. His is a statutory position, created specially to oversee national welfare schemes for the handicapped.

But Maneka deems otherwise. Her recorded explanation for the transfer is that the Northeast needs a senior officer (read Sharma) to monitor the disbursement of funds to the NGOs operating in the hill states. And if this meant shifting the headquarters of his Commission as well, the Minister was ready to oblige.

Behind every woman

The other Gandhi widow, Sonia, has also succeeded in ruffling feathers. After two months of anelectoral-victory-induced stupor, Congressmen are back to their favourite bitching game with Sonia providing the grist in her inexplicable appointments to the Congress Working Committee.

The prime target is the relatively unknown nominee in the women’s quota, Ganga Potai. Her only claim to fame, according to Congress circles, is her closeness to Arjun Singh. She surfaced as one of the youngest members of his Cabinet when he was Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. Then she reappeared as a member of the National Commission for Women when he was Human Resource Development Minister. And now she is in the CWC, apparently after Singh made a fervent plea that he would give up his claim to a berth if she was accommodated instead.

As for the others, Mohsina Kidwai is being described as former UP Chief Minister Narian Dutt Tiwari’s candidate and N. Lakshmi Devi only proved the Yadav charge against a quota for women by grovelling in gratitude before Andhra PCC chief Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy, quite oblivious to the fact thather new appointment places her above him in the Congress hierarchy.

Another Khurana?

There is an interesting little tale behind the unceremonious exit of Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha’s advisor, Mohan Guruswamy. The BJP grapevine says it was to have been a graceful bowing out on health grounds after the triumvirate of Vajpayee, Advani and Sinha decided his position had become untenable. His controversial resignation letter raking up the Christian issue was hidden away and Guruswamy was packed off on a telecom junket to the United States from where, according to the gentleman’s agreement, he was to have sent the usual spiel about doctor’s advice, etc.

Before that could happen, a leak to one of the pink papers speculated on Guruswamy’s impending doom because of his capers in the Finance Ministry. One of his friends was authorised to do a tit for tat and his resignation letter was suitably leaked to the media.

The Finance Minister only realised what was happening when correspondents startedcalling his office for a reaction. A hurriedly summoned pow wow among the BJP’s top brass decided Guruswamy would have to be “sacked”. Till midnight, the harried spokesman of the Finance Ministry was on the phone to agencies and newspaper offices with Sinha’s version accusing Guruswamy of “exceeding his brief”.

BJP circles are now bracing themselves for another Khurana on the rampage when Guruswamy returns from the US.

Losing out in Lucknow

After Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh nearly lost his job some weeks ago, his controversial aide, Kusum Rai, has decided to keep a low profile, at least when the Prime Minister comes constituency visiting to Lucknow. She was nowhere to be seen the last couple of times Vajpayee touched base with his voters.

One immediate fallout of Singh’s slipping hold in UP was the removal of the Lucknow BJP chief, Rajendra Tiwari, the day after Vajpayee’s last visit. Tiwari was known as a Rai nominee. But the lady’s hidden hand is still at work. Tiwari hasbeen appointed head of the UP Food and Essential Commodities Corporation. As soft a landing as he could get.

Babu’s bloomer

The armed forces never tire of poking fun at the IAS bureaucracy that runs the Ministry of Defence and the career of many a service officer. And the recent clash between the civilian authorities and the naval head, which paved the ground for Chief of Naval Staff Vishnu Bhagwat’s ouster, revived tales about a certain Joint Secretary’s bloomer in an open conference of the forces’ commanders.

In the midst of serious discussions about US-stationed nuclear weapons in Diego Garcia, the exasperated JS wanted to know why the forces were so anxious. After all, he reasoned, Diego Garcia is far away in the South China Sea. The conference subsided in astounded silence. And although this happened sometime in October, Defence Ministry corridors are still buzzing with tales about the astonishing ignorance of basic geography among IAS officers.