Pandora146;s box

The government may find it difficult to comply with Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah8217;s directive to produce all documents on Shiv Shankar Menon8217;s appointment as foreign secretary.

The government may find it difficult to comply with Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah8217;s directive to produce all documents on Shiv Shankar Menon8217;s appointment as foreign secretary. The ministry of external affairs, the establishment officer, and the cabinet secretariat do not have any paperwork to prove that there was due application of mind in superceding 16 officers. If there is documentation of any sort, it is in the PMO, in the nature of notes on a shadow file listing Menon8217;s suitability, but not the reasons for excluding others. Veena Sikri, one of those who was superseded, has pointed out that Menon8217;s appointment was announced on the PMO8217;s website four days before the reported meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Appointments CCA.

The Central Information Commission has given a landmark ruling, which has opened a Pandora8217;s box. Whether the gutsy Sikri, who took on the establishment, will follow the case to its logical conclusion remains to be seen. Sikri, who is on leave, is reportedly willing to resume duty if she is given a post where she does not have to report directly to the foreign secretary who superseded her.

Private property?

Eminent historian Ramachandra Guha admits that in researching for his just released history of post-independent India, India after Gandhi, he was handicapped, as were other historians before him, by the fact that he had no access to the papers of both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi, who is the trustee for the Family8217;s documents has denied everyone permission to view them. This would be perfectly legitimate if the papers concerned only the prime ministers8217; private lives. However, much of archival material on Nehru and Gandhi, which has been classified as private, deals in fact with their official work. This is because both prime ministers preferred to work from their homes rather than the office in South Block. Consequently, all papers filed at their residences were appropriated by their heirs. Guha feels a PIL on this issue should be considered to decide whether the documents have been wrongly classified.

Bengal tigers

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee8217;s supporters were taken aback to find two other names from Bengal in the running for the president8217;s post: Amartya Sen and Pranab Mukherjee. The latter could emerge as a serious contender, since ironically, he is acceptable in political circles where the Congress is not.

BJP leader Arun Jaitley described Mukherjee as the Congress parliamentarian he admired the most. Even Amar Singh speaks with affection of Mukherjee for his assistance at the start of his political career in Bengal. Supporters of Chatterjee and Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat express doubts as to whether Mukherjee8217;s party would be willing to spare him, considering his pivotal role in the government.

Actually, it is this very fact which will make him a popular choice among some of his senior colleagues. Mukherjee is aware of his upper-caste handicap. Some time back, when asked by a Bengali journalist about the speaker8217;s chances of being elected president, Mukherjee reminded him that since Shankar Dayal Sharma a decade back, no brahmin had been elected the head of state.

Wives8217; woes

On the basis of emigration records, the Delhi Police, through the Lok Sabha secretariat, has asked some 40 MPs to submit their passports and those of their wives for verification. The inquiries are a sequel to the arrest of Babubhai Katara. But in two cases the complaint is not of human trafficking. The wife of a Samajwadi Party MP from Uttar Pradesh and the spouse of a RJD MP from Bihar have complained that their husbands have misused their free transport privileges taking along women who are not their wives.

Unbroken record

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BJP president Rajnath Singh cut Arun Jaitley out of the Uttar Pradesh poll campaign since he did not want him to garner any of the credit. In hindsight, he did him a favour. The BJP8217;s poor performance in the assembly elections means that Jaitley8217;s recent record of electoral wins for the party 8212; Bihar, Punjab and the Muncipal Corporation of Delhi 8212; remains unblemished.