Smarten Up Mode

Hi-Tech Plans

After his success in the Rajasthan assembly elections, the techno-savvy Pramod Mahajan has decided to replicate the election strategy at the national level with the help of professionals in field research and data analysis. A thousand field workers are collecting data from key states and the information gathered is fed into state-of-the-art computers at Mahajan’s office-cum-residence on Safdarjung Road. Some 6.5 lakh respondents spread all over the country are being interviewed. The inputs will decide such factors as balancing castes of candidates in a particular region and the issues important to voters. It was on the basis of some of the sample responses that the BJP took the decision not to align with Om Prakash Chautala in Haryana since the field workers felt his unpopularity would harm the BJP’s chances. Mahajan’s information service has also recommended that the BJP go it alone in Assam and Jharkhand.

Mahajan’s strategy planning is entirely his own baby and there are murmurs from the BJP party office at Ashoka Road that they do not have a clue as to what the general secretary’s high tech database is all about.

Commission Railroads

Railway Board Chairman PK Singh sent word to the 12th Finance Commission that he would not be able to appear in person but would send his number two to explain Railway’s finances. The commission took this as an affront and threatened that since it has quasi-judicial powers he could well be send to jail for defiance of the commission’s directives. At most he could simply seek an adjournment. Singh promptly fell in line and turned up in person. The Secretary, Posts, was similarly chided when he sought to depute his additional secretary for the commission’s hearing. Senior government secretaries who are to be summoned shortly, please take note.

Late Arrivals

Organisers panicked when 20 minutes before the arrival of the chief guest French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin for the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial lecture, the hall was still empty. The 60-odd university students who were standing at the rear were asked to fill up the front rows. The organisers should have known better. In Delhi it is a status symbol to turn up late. By the time the Capital’s power elite arrived, the front rows were occupied and several eminent invitees including M S Gill and Kuldip Nayar had difficulty finding seats. Scindia’s own sister Yashodhara, Hindustan Times’s Vice-Chairperson Shobhana Bharatiya and Congress MP Ashwini Kumar had per force to stand.

Package Deal Only

It is an Indian tradition that mothers make all kinds of sacrifices for their sons, but Varun Gandhi’s decision to join the BJP has been made to protect his mother’s political future and not vice-versa. Varun has certainly little to gain personally from the move. At 24 he is too young to stand for the Lok Sabha and had no need to join any party in a hurry. By aligning with the BJP, Varun has effectively blocked his entry into the Congress at a later date. Normally, the Gandhi name should have ensured that Varun starts at the top in the Congress, except, of course, for the very real problem that his aunt believes that the dynastic line of succession runs only on her side of the family.

Maneka has come to accept that it is extremely difficult for an independent politician to survive without the backing of a national party. In the last UP assembly elections she walked out of the NDA and put up five candidates in her Pilibhit constituency. All of them lost. At one stage she reportedly even toyed with the idea of joining the Akali Dal since the BJP made it clear that this time it would not back her parliamentary candidature unless she contested on the BJP ticket and not as an independent. The party insisted as its pound of flesh that Varun also join the party.