Sunny boy

There was a heated exchange between Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and Urban Development Minister Jaipal Reddy at a Cabinet meet last week. Yadav charged that the Delhi Metro was extending much beyond its territory. By moving deep into Haryana and UP, the Delhi Metro was snatching commuters away from the railways and eating into railway revenues. Reddy’s contention was that the Metro was expanding in preparation for the Commonwealth Games. It was finally agreed that the Metro would under no circumstances proceed beyond Ghaziabad.

Not paid to order

Parliament voted to raise the President’s salary before the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission are adopted. Otherwise, an anomalous position would have arisen. The president, who is the head of the state, would have been paid less than the head of bureaucracy and the service chiefs. The president’s salary has been pegged at Rs 1 lakh a month, Rs 10,000 more than the commission’s recommendation for the cabinet secretary and armed forces chiefs.

But no one seems to have given much thought to the fact that the prime minister, who is the head of government, draws only around Rs 68,000 and will be earning less than the cabinet secretary and even senior government of India secretaries, who are expected to get around Rs 80,000. A raise for the prime minister seems unlikely. His salary and that of other ministers was linked to the increase in salaries for MPs and the MPs were given huge hike in 2006.

Congress’s new caucus

Congresspersons have dubbed the trio of Margaret Alva, Veerappa Moily and Oscar Fernandes as the Karnataka caucus for the extraordinary clout they wield thanks to their proximity to 10 Janpath. General Secretary Alva, in particular, has rubbed up many in the party the wrong way, including Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Alva’s detractors complain that she has been put in charge of over half a dozen key states though she has a record of taking the wrong decisions and giving the Congress a bad name in the bargain. Alva’s most recent goof-up was in Meghalaya where although the Congress had the largest number of MLAs, the NCP led by P. Sangma wrested the initiative and forced the Congress Chief Minister D.D. Lapang to step down. Instead of wooing independents and talking to the NCP, Alva assumed that the chief minister’s post was sewed up because an obliging governor was persuaded to swear in Lapang post haste. A year earlier in Goa, thanks to similar brazenness, the Congress government was almost unseated and the governor accused of constitutional impropriety.

Prodigal takes charge

Karanataka strongman Deve Gowda is gearing up for the forthcoming state poll and is confident that the JD(S) will play a decisive role in the formation of the next government. Gowda’s son H.D. Kumaraswamy has already started a whirlwind campaign tour and with his father’s blessings is being tacitly projected as the JD(S)’s chief ministerial candidate. Which is a bit surprising, considering that Deve Gowda once disowned Kumaraswamy and dubbed him as politically immature and inexperienced compared to his favourite son H.D. Revanna. Despite his known soft spot for Revanna, Gowda seems to have accepted that the impulsive and hot-tempered Revanna is not a popular choice.