Turf Tug-a-War

Advani, meanwhile, asked for the Department of Personnel and Training to be transferred to him following Vasundhara Raje Scindia’s exit. The PM, however, managed to cling to the CBI by hiving it off from the Personnel Department and putting it under the Cabinet Secretariat.

What is more, a notification has been issued that the Establishment Officer will report to the Cabinet Secretary, which effectively means that the PMO retains control of postings and transfers since the file is initiated and processed by the Establishment Officer!

Minor to Maha(jan) move

Until Advani returned from the Middle East, the proposed Cabinet reshuffle was supposed to be a relatively minor readjustment exercise. But the Deputy PM’s insistence on Pramod Mahajan’s removal altered the entire operation.

The move to oust Mahajan was not due to any single factor — his indiscretions had been mounting. Mahajan’s partisanship in the mobile telephone controversy, his flashy lifestyle, the allegations against him in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case and the activities of his globetrotting family were all raked up.

Backed by the RSS, Advani along with Jaswant Singh and Venkaiah Naidu mounted a campaign against the controversial minister. Mahajan assumed that he was indispensable to Vajpayee and, therefore, invincible. But the PM remained silent when other BJP leaders demanded his head. The removal from the PMO of Vijay Goel, who is close to Mahajan, is also noteworthy.

Vanvaas in turns

The four rivals in the BJP’s Generation Next, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Shourie and Arun Jaitley, have often stepped into each other’s shoes swapping portfolios and positions. For instance, Mahajan, Swaraj and Jaitley have replaced one another in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Shourie and Mahajan have alternated as Communications and IT minister and Shourie and Jaitley have both handled the disinvestment portfolio.

It is also curious that at any given point of time, one of the quartet’s career graph is down in the dumps while the others are flying high. At the moment, it is Mahajan who has been exiled from the corridors of power.

He is expected to report to party president Venkaiah Naidu, whom he considers several notches below him. Six months ago, after the last Cabinet reshuffle, Jaitley was said to be in the dog house because he had resigned from the ministry to become party general secretary.

Swaraj was sent into vanvaas after she lost the Delhi Assembly election, and had to wait on the sidelines before being inducted back into the Cabinet. Shourie, whose stars are on the ascendancy at the moment, had felt let down at the start of Vajpayee’s regime when he was allocated the inconsequential ministries of Programme Implementation and Planning while Jaitley was given the coveted Disinvestment Ministry.

Award held back

Reliance founder Dhirubhai Ambani was tipped to get the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award, posthumously this year since an impressive line-up of influential politicians across the political spectrum proposed his name. Both Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Kalam, who make the final decision, were agreeable. But the award could not be announced because of a technical snag.

A few years ago, Ambani’s name had been proposed by the Padma Committee for a Padma Vibhushan, but his name had to be struck off at the last minute when it went for the mandatory clearance from the income tax and excise departments. Old cases were found pending against Ambani under the Official Secrets Act and excise laws.

The government felt that it would be inappropriate to award a Bharat Ratna to a man who had been turned down earlier for a lesser honour. Incidentally, the rule that there should be no pending income tax and excise cases against an awardee has in the past prevented newspaper owner Ramoji Rao and India’s richest man Azim Premji from being named for the Republic Day honours.

Out in the cold

Doordarshan’s website was launched over a year ago with considerable fanfare despite objections from the Finance Department that it would be an additional financial burden on Prasar Bharati since advertising revenue would be negligible. Nevertheless, DD went ahead with the costly venture collaborating with Satyam. It is not only the advertisers who do not take the website seriously, even the input providers seem to be sleeping. The weather report on the website was last updated on December 22, missing the entire cold wave in New Delhi!

Write to coomikapoor@expressindia.com