No retirement plan

At the UPA anniversary dinner Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh8217;s poor physical condition was very apparent.

At the UPA anniversary dinner Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh8217;s poor physical condition was very apparent. He had great difficulty getting up from his chair every time there was a photo call for senior leaders. But those who believe Singh can be written off because of ill health and pensioned off as a governor should do a re-think. As Singh himself pointed out in a recent interview, Franklin Roosevelt was paralysed from the waist down but was president of the US. Singh admitted candidly that he is not interested in becoming a governor. 8220;Raj Bhavan is not my idea of retirement.8221;

Singh may be positioning himself to be the party8217;s candidate for prime minister after the next election, since he is confident that he is more acceptable to the Left and other UPA allies than Dr Manmohan Singh. Despite Sonia Gandhi8217;s disapproval, Singh continues his veiled barbs against the prime minister. Arjun Singh claims to have a band of over two dozen MPs who have been loyal to him since the time he formed the breakaway Tewari Congress and took on the then prime minister, Narasimha Rao. But of late some of his former followers have begun to distance themselves from him.

Extra advantage

Few are aware that Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav8217;s son Tejaswi is a member of the Delhi Daredevils IPL team. Tejaswi has never actually played in an IPL match, but then neither have any of the other three under-22s, who are included because of the IPL rule that young talent is to be nurtured. Nineteen-year-old Tejaswi was captain of the Delhi under-15 and under-17 teams and is a good cricketer. But at the same time, he is not in the league of certain other promising under-19s like Pradeep Sangwan. It is a moot point whether Tejaswi would have been included if his father was not a minister. GMR Sports, the Hyderabad-based company which owns the Delhi cricket team, is after all part of GMR Holdings, responsible for the modernisation of Delhi airport and under fire for the messy execution. A little bit of political goodwill is always welcome.

Expert advice

Subramaniam Swamy is in the US accompanied by three senior purohits from well known maths. He is to be felicitated for spearheading the campaign against the building of the Rama Setu channel this Sunday at a function in New Jersey organised by Hindutva-leaning NRIs. Having become something of an expert in fighting defamation cases, Swamy8217;s advice is now being sought by some NRIs against whom a defamation suit for 100 million has been filed in the New York State Supreme Court. The three NRIs named in the suit are part of the Forum for Saving Gandhi8217;s Heritage, which brought out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times some two years back, leveling a series of allegations against Sonia Gandhi and her family.