Courting Trouble

Chandresh Kumari,the Jodhpur MP who is tipped to be the next chairperson of the National Commission of Women,can rightfully hope to hog some limelight. Generally,those occupying the post seem to get a lot of fringe benefits like preferential treatment from the Congress high command. Take the case of incumbent Girija Vyas. She is often fielded by the Congress as a key speaker in Lok Sabha debates,was nominated to important committees and was also put on the panel of chairman of the Lok Sabha. Kumari,a relatively low-profile MP,can now look forward to similar attention if the high command reposes faith on her.

Man in a hurry

Although Assembly election in Uttar Pradesh is still a year away,Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is in a hurry to finalise his partys list of candidates. His worry is that the Mayawati government might recommend advancing of the elections,which means it could take place even later this year. More than that,candidate selection might turn out to be messy affair and there could be plenty of heartburn. However,an early completion of the process could give him time to soothe the nerves of potentially disgruntled leaders. In fact,the grapevine has it that three senior Samajwadi leaders Rajya Sabha MP Rasheed Masood,deputy leader of the party in Lok Sabha Reoti Raman Singh and party chief whip in Lok Sabha Shailendra Kumar are already unhappy with some of the candidates finalised by Mulayam.

Civil displeasure

It is known that Swami Agnivesh is upset with the Congress these days because of the partys attack on civil society activists. It seems he holds a lesser-known grudge. In the last Lok Sabha,he was staying in an MPs flat in South Avenue. The MP in question hailed from Andhra Pradesh. The then Chairman of the House Committee Madhusudan Mistry,a Congress MP,asked him to vacate the flat. Although other MPs put pressure on Mistry to back off,the senior Congress leader from Gujarat refused to buckle and sent notices to Agnivesh who was then forced to vacate the flat.

In the Navy now

If finding a way out of the controversy around the Army Chiefs age was not enough to handle,Defence Minister A K Antony has to first figure out the appointment of the next Chief of the Integrated Service Command CISC. While Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha is the seniormost Naval officer who was expected to succeed to the post,the Navy has recommended the name of Vice Admiral R K Dhowan who is lower on the seniority list. This has sparked off a controversy with Vice Admiral Sinha making a statutory representation. Now,the ball has landed in the court of the Defence Ministry which feels that backing the Navy could attract legal censure at a later date but telling the Navy to back down could amount to interference. Meanwhile,leaving the CISC vacant for long may not be good idea either.

Varuns Parivar

Taking a leaf out of Uma Bhartis book,Varun Gandhi let his ego get the better of him at a core group meeting of the BJPs Uttar Pradesh unit. I am the party, he is said to have thundered at the meeting when members objected to the fact that he was holding rallies in the state without taking the party and the senior leaders into confidence. The history is that Bharti was hounded out of the party with her proprietary claims being dismissed outright. One hears that Varun walked out of the meeting after the leaders present tore into him,reminding him that no leader,however big,can exist without the party and basically asked him to fall in line.