Opinion A hack’s job

The Congress austerity controversy has thrown up some embarrassing facts which have left the party red-faced. While S M Krishna and Shashi Tharoor occupied five-star accommodation at their own expense,it turns out that all outstation MPs whose bungalows in Delhi are still being readied,routinely stay at the four-star Samrat and the five star Ashoka Hotel when in Delhi and the government foots the bill. Incidentally,the money spent by the Urban Development Ministry on the renovation of MPs’ houses in the last four years was a whopping Rs 100 crore.

Tweeting up wrong tree

Contrary to the claim of his detractors in the Congress that a chastened Shashi Tharoor has practically given up tweeting,the minister continues to tweet as frequently as before. On his site,Tharoor says he tweets for only twenty minutes a day. But his output is prodigious and he has now a phenomenal 200,000 followers. Tharoor is a victim of coterie politics in the Congress. His unconventional remarks,not just about “holy cows” and “cattle class”,but also dubbing Chinese actions as “outrageous” and declaring the Sharm el-Sheikh declaration as “not legally binding”,have been exploited by his detractors as ammunition against him. Many Congresspersons,particularly from his home state,are furious that a newcomer has had such a meteoric rise. Some mistakenly assume that Tharoor has got so far because of the backing of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his band of Malayali aides. With the knives out for him in the Congress,Tharoor could not have survived so long without the blessings of the Congress’s first family. The only question is whether it is Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi who is backing Tharoor.

Facing a ban

Unlike Tharoor,who has not yet been banned from tweeting,all officers in RAW,IB and intelligence gathering wings of the state police have been ordered to take their names off Facebook. The ban has nothing whatsoever to do with the controversy in India over Twitter. It is,in fact,a fallout of the July scandal in Britain where John Sawers,head of the British Secret Service,MI6,got into hot water after the media discovered that his wife had posted family pictures and a photograph of his house on Facebook Even the armed forces is considering whether officers should be permitted to use social networking sites on the Internet.

National,not local leader

Many BJP supporters in Patna are annoyed because their local MP,Shatrughan Sinha,avoids attending functions like weddings and funerals—which MPs are usually expected to attend. Sinha’s explanation is that he does not merely represent Patna,but the entire nation. His point is that he is a national figure like Sonia Gandhi and L K Advani and is not restricted to his constituency. Judging by his recent pronouncements,the BJP may soon have yet another problem on its hand. Sinha has made clear he wants to be appointed party general secretary and his wife to be made a Rajya Sabha member.

Missing camaraderie

The DMK continues its game of one upmanship with the Congress. For instance,for the centenary celebrations of DMK founder C N Annadurai in Chennai on September 15,Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was invited as chief guest but Congress ministers from the state were missing. In what seemed like a tit for tat,on September 21,Home Minister P Chidambaram inaugurated the Duronto express train from Chennai to Delhi but the DMK central ministers were absent. Minister for Textiles Dayanidhi Maran did not attend the function since the Railway Minister did not call him personally but left it to the general manager of the Southern Railways to do the inviting.