Omar Live

Ploughing a lonely furrow

While Rahul Gandhi has decided to go on the warpath against the Mayawati government on the issue of land acquisition,his enthusiasm has not found much support from Congress party cadres. When he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police,no more than two dozen Congress workers were present,the rest having returned from the site earlier that evening. Even at the party headquarters in Delhi,there was no activity at the office of the Kisan and Khet Mazdoor Congress the AICC cell for farmers and agricultural labourers with its office locked as it usually is.

Broadcasting its priorities

For two trips in succession,the Prime Ministers Office has decided not to take television journalists on board the special aircraft carrying the Prime Minister. It was never clear what provoked the decision,but was widely speculated that this had to do with differences over ways in which certain facts pertaining to the UPA government were projected. But when the decision came under sharp attack from the electronic media,the PMO did a sudden U-turn and decided to take the electronic media on board the PMs aircraft for the visit to Kabul. Whats worse,it went to the other extreme and left out print journalists while inviting only the important television channels. The MEA went even a step further,ostensibly on security guidance,to ensure the Afghanistan Embassy did not issue a visa to any news organisation other than those shortlisted to travel in the PMs aircraft. This strange cocktail of security and media management is yet to be decoded fully.

Cross-border problems

It now emerges that the return of Uma Bharati to the BJP hinges on whether the mercurial leader can be prevented from making a cross-border infiltration into Madhya Pradesh. Since the formula worked out by party president Nitin Gadkari to dispel Shivraj Singh Chouhans fear of Umas destabilising effect in Madhya Pradesh is that she would confine herself to UP,the party does not quite know how to ensure that this works. A senior party functionary said: We want to deploy her in the Bundelkhand region of UP which has a sizeable presence of her Lodh community but we dont know when she might cross the border into the adjacent MP. For a party which has always had foreign infiltration among its key talking points,this singular case of potential political infiltration is indeed difficult to come to terms with.

Legal politics

BJP Rajya Sabha MP and former Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalanis third-place finish in this years election of the Supreme Court Bar Association is being touted by the pro-Congress lawyers as a defeat of the BJP. While the winner,P H Parekh,who defeated advocate A C Aggarwala by a margin of only two votes,is not an overt Congress sympathiser,the pro-Congress lawyers are going to town,saying they ensured the renowned criminal lawyers defeat. The difference between the victorious candidate and Jethmalani was 22 votes. Such was the enthusiasm of the pro-Congress lawyers to Jethmalanis loss that they distributed sweets in the evening.