Missing in action

This should give the Left something to chew on in the light of its vociferous objections to hiring a few foreign consultants in the Planning Commission.

Placement problems

Parliament’s Central Hall is closed as it is undergoing extensive renovation. The walls which were beginning to crumble under the weight of so many paintings are being strengthened and re-painted. Several MPs belonging to the Left and the Congress had objected when the BJP government had installed a portrait of Veer Savarkar, particularly as it directly faced Mahatma Gandhi’s. It will be interesting to see whether Savarkar’s picture will hang in the same place as before after the renovation is complete sometime in November.

Medal for tardiness

Montek Singh Ahluwalia has a point when he questions the wisdom of bureaucrats assessing each other’s performance. Take this hilarious example. A senior IAS officer of the 1973 batch who is just a few years away from retirement recently received a letter from the Personnel Department referring to a medal that she had been awarded some 30 years back, when she graduated from the Mussoorie academy. A batchmate had complained to the department that he had been unfairly overlooked for the Subhash Dua gold medal for the best all-round IAS probationer. After mulling over the matter for three decades, the babus in North Block have now concluded that the petitioner can be a co-winner of the award and a government notification will be issued to this effect.

Amma on his head

Laloo Prasad Yadav’s week-long tour of south India with wife Rabri and nine offspring in tow was to pray for world peace and his political future. Apart from the main temples of Meenakshi at Madurai, Venkateshwara at Tirupati and Padmanabhaswamy at Thiruvananthapuram, Laloo also visited several other Hindu shrines. His pilgrimage was covered extensively by the southern media, particularly TV. Many flocked to see him out of curiosity and also because he was very generous in distributing alms to beggars. Laloo boasted that he was an even bigger hit in south India than in Pakistan. But with elections in Bihar due early next year, Laloo should be more concerned about his popularity back home, where it is Ram Vilas Paswan who is drawing the crowds.

In Madurai, one fan placed a bamboo crown on Laloo’s head with pictures of the goddess Meenakshi and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. When someone pointed out that there was also a picture of Jayalalithaa on one side, Laloo quickly threw off the headgear, exclaiming he certainly didn’t want Jaya on his head.

Long way to go

Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Man Friday, Company Affairs Minister Prem Gupta, was irked by a reference to him in this newspaper as the Amar Singh of the RJD. Seeing him remonstrating with a journalist for what he considered a libelous comment, Laloo interceded, and remarked: ‘‘Why are you getting so upset? You have still a long way to go before you reach his level.’’ Now was that meant to be an insult or a compliment, Gupta is still to figure out.

Interestingly, Gupta, usually always by Laloo’s side whenever he is not in Bihar, was not to be seen during his recent southern sojourn.

Unspoken rivalry

Pramod Mahajan, who has been virtually exiled from Delhi since the parliamentary polls, cannot hide his pique at rivals in the party who are more comfortably placed. Speaking to newsmen in the Capital the other day, he observed sarcastically that ‘‘unlike some who had been born national leaders’’, he had risen through state politics. Since he is in-charge of the BJP campaign for Maharashtra, Mahajan pointed out that ‘‘at least in my case there is a thermometer by which to judge my performance’’, implying that other rootless politicians were more fortunate in this respect.

A few days later, Arun Jaitley, at one of his press briefings, remarked casually that sometimes when a person remains too long in state politics, he loses national perspective. He was referring to H D Deve Gowda, Rajnath Singh and Shanta Kumar, but some cynics thought he might also have Mahajan in mind.