Timely Help

At the BJP headquarters, copies of the Time article have been photocopied and distributed. Strangely, the outcry emanates from Advani loyalists rather than from the PM’s camp. The PM could well ask with friends like this, who needs enemies? In fact, two former scribes close to Advani are believed to be the sources for much of the article.

Shut-Open Policy

Last year, the Prasar Bharati CEO Anil Baijal approached the Prasar Bharati Board for permission to close DD’s news channel. The news channel, the brainchild of former I&B minister Pramod Mahajan, lost as much as Rs 40 crore in one year and was seen by a minuscule 0.5% cent of total news viewership which in turn is believed to be only some two % of the total viewers. But next month the Director General Doordarshan will submit a proposal for reviving the channel to the Prasar Bharati Board.

The I&B Ministry is under pressure from the PMO to revive the channel. The official explanation is that the channel will be valuable in countering Pakistani propaganda, especially PTV. A hint has been dropped that the MEA might pick up the tab for the channel’s huge losses, just as the Home Ministry funds the Kashir channel. But if the news channel is practically invisible how is it expected to fight the propaganda battle against Pakistan? Cynics suspect that the real reason for re-opening the channel is simply to compensate certain influential TV producers close to the powers since a major share of their income had dried up after the news channel was closed.

Under and Out

In the forthcoming Cabinet expansion, the two Js in the Cabinet, Minister for Social Welfare Satyanarayan Jatiya and Tribal Minister Juel Oram, are prime targets for removal on the ostensible grounds of under performance.

Because of its alliance with Mayawati, the BJP doesn’t require a token SC and ST minister any more. And if under performance is the excuse for sidelining these two, then over achievement — by indulging in a public tiff with Health Minister C P Thakur — is what may get Animal Welfare Minister Maneka Gandhi into trouble.

Left Out in the Cold

The Left lobby had no option but to select an in-house candidate like Captain Lakshmi Sehgal as its presidential nominee since the moment the Congress left its side the presidential choices dried up.

Former Chief Justice Ahmadi sent word from Canada that he was not interested in contesting and Deputy Speaker P M Sayeed as a Congressman had perforce to decline. Even eminent jurist Fali Nariman, whose name had figured in talks between the Congress and the Left, was not an option once the Congress moved out.

Nariman, as the favourite counsel for the multinationals and business houses and one who has fought many legal battles on behalf of the employers against their employees, could hardly have become a rallying point for the Left.

Forgotten Angle

Ayub Thuker, Syed Geelani’s alleged financier in London, is actually just one of several Kashmiri militants who was named 11 years earlier in the now moribund Jain hawala case. Syed Salah-uddin, the dreaded chief of the Hizbul Mujahideen, was a co-accused along with Thuker on the basis of the confession of Shahabuddin Ghauri, who was arrested under TADA in the hawala case.

While the CBI team, prodded by the Supreme Court, was constantly in the news on its investigations of the alleged hawala payments in the Jain diaries, the IB and RAW who should have been pursuing the leads on the Kashmiri militants provided by the accused in the same case did nothing. And Salahuddin, who was then living on our side of Kashmir has since crossed over to PoK and is openly engaged in anti-India activities.

Undiplomatic Huff

Delhi’s diplomatic corps is abuzz with a dinner party altercation between a senior MEA official and Mala Singh, the intrepid editor of Seminar magazine last week. Singh was doing a light-hearted imitation of Abdul Kalam at a private party at a hotel when an overzealous joint secretary of a key Foreign Office desk threatened to walk out of the party in protest because fun was being made of the President of India in front of ‘‘these foreigners.’’

The half a dozen diplomats, including two ambassadors, present were not pleased to be referred to impolitely as ‘‘these foreigners’’. And should members of the MEA assume that they are a moral police squad to arbiter social conduct, particularly when no offence was intended and Kalam is not even president yet?

Illustrations by Ajit Kumar