Swami and friends

Subramaniam Swamy, Om Prakash Chautala, Chandra Shekhar, Uma Bharati, Vasundara Raje Scindia and Narasimha Rao all telephoned the controvers...

Subramaniam Swamy, Om Prakash Chautala, Chandra Shekhar, Uma Bharati, Vasundara Raje Scindia and Narasimha Rao all telephoned the controversial godman to congratulate him on his acquittal in the St. Kitts case. According to ashram sources, even Congress MP Satish Sharma, although busy with the extravagant wedding festivities of his daughter Sharika, conveyed his good wishes. Clearly, the shrewd swami still has friends in the Congress even if the party has blackballed him.

Chandraswami8217;s statement that he was harassed over the St. Kitts case in order to target Rajiv Gandhi was meant as a reminder of his earlier proximity to the Gandhis. The land for Chandraswami8217;s ashram in Delhi8217;s Qutub Institutional Area was allotted, not by Narasimha Rao, as is often assumed, but by Indira Gandhi. It was Jagmohan as DDA Vice-Chairman who signed the lease deed.

Chandraswami is confident that he will now get back his impounded passport 8212; the remaining 10 cases against him pertain to foreign exchange violations. After Diwali, he hopes to leave the country for the first time in eight years. Chandraswami says he has kept in touch with his high-profile foreign friends like Elizabeth Taylor, Adnan Khasoggii and the Sultan of Brunei over the telephone.

Communication Gap

At a lunch meeting last week with Congresspersons including Girija Vyas, Jayanti Natrajan and Rajeev Shukla, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasized the importance of Congress party officials being properly briefed by those in government before they speak to the press. A coordination committee of AICC members and PMO officials Prithviraj Chavan and Sanjay Baru has been set up. It has also been decided that senior ministers will interact regularly with the office bearers.

The PM8217;s concern for better coordination between the party and the government was perhaps due to a major goof-up in Tamil Nadu on the eve of his recent visit to Chennai. Salman Khurshid, who is the AICC member in charge of Tamil Nadu, released to the media the PM8217;s tour programme which announced that the PM would meet both DMK leader M Karunanidhi and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. Neither of the two had an idea of the meeting. The former was away in Ooty and the latter had not made any request to call on the PM.

Doosra Parivar

The only two BJP leaders invited by RSS boss K Sudershan to the annual Dassehra function in Nagpur this year were L K Advani and Varun Gandhi. Many BJP veterans are fuming at the RSS honouring a 24-year old, whose claim to fame is simply that he is a scion of the Nehru Gandhi family. After all, the BJP has all along railed against dynastic rule.

Sudershan, who has met Varun previously, is impressed with his personality and vote-catching potential. In Maharashtra, the BJP won in a high proportion of the seats where Varun campaigned. Though it is generally assumed that the Gandhi family is anathema to the RSS 8212; after all Indira Gandhi banned the organisation and put its leaders in jail during the Emergency 8212; the RSS respects Indira Gandhi for being a strong leader and a nationalist. Sanjay Gandhi, Varun8217;s father, is admired for not pandering to votebank politics, implementing family planning and ordering the Turkman Gate demolitions.

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A proposal to make Varun one of the party8217;s general secretaries in the new set-up, has been scuttled. Generation next in the BJP, which means Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan, Vasundara Raje and Uma Bharati, must be feeling slightly miffed by the new entrant who is waiting to turn 25 so that he can contest a by-election from UP.

Royal horse sense

The late Madhavrao Scindia was a close friend of Amitabh Bachchan, but it never occurred to him to invite the superstar to the family-run Scindia School at Gwalior. Generally, only staid statesmen and senior politicians are invited. This year, Madhavrao8217;s son, Jyotiraditya Scindia, in a departure from the past, had the novel idea of requesting actor Shahrukh Khan to be chief guest at the school8217;s Founders Day.

It was not just the school, but Gwalior city which gave the actor a royal reception. The actor was driven to the school in a horse carriage with a cavalry escort at the front and rear and cheering crowds lining the route. The school boys were jubilant and even the school8217;s chairperson, Jyotiraditya, seemed star-struck. His 15-minute speech was replete with references to the Bollywood star.

Barbed wire connect

The barbs directed at the BJP in RSS chief K Sudershan8217;s Vijaya Dashami address reflect his unhappiness with the senior party leadership which did not implement the Hindutva agenda while the BJP was in power. An additional grouse is that Advani has made only cosmetic changes in his new executive. According to reports, the RSS was upset with general secretary Muqhtar Abbas Naqvi for celebrating his birthday a day after the veteran RSS leader Dattopant Thengadi passed away.

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The RSS is biding its time. It calculates that the Assembly elections in Jharkhand, Bihar and Haryana will go badly for the BJP after which the RSS will be better placed to dictate terms to a weakened party. By April next year, the RSS hopes it will be in a position to install its own nominees in key position in the party.