Opinion IB in his blood

Mahua Mitra,once a vice-president at JP Morgan,relocated from the corporate world in London to West Bengal,where she enlisted as one of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘aam aadmi ke sipahi’. But within a year,Mitra has left the Congress and joined Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. Mitra,with her trademark Blackberry in one hand and a laptop slung on her shoulder,assumed she would be on the fast track,particularly as she threw Rahul Gandhi’s name around. But she merely succeeded in putting up the backs of the stodgy,status-quoist state party leadership. During the parliamentary poll last year,somebody dared to check with Gandhi whether she was in fact his candidate and Gandhi made it clear that the PCC could take its own call on whether to give her a Lok Sabha seat from North Bengal or not. Mitra has joined the Trinamool Congress,hoping that she will at least eventually get an assembly nomination out of Mamata Banerjee. Trinamool functionaries complain privately that the Congress has passed on its headache to them.

Long-armed lobbyist

The BJP has gone to town over the taped conversations concerning A Raja’s Telecom Ministry,which have been leaked to the media. The party has expressed holy horror since the tapes indicate that corporate lobbyists tried to influence ministerial appointments and allotment of telecom licences. But the key lobbyist mentioned in the tapes was also a player in the BJP’s own internal succession war last year and helped leak to the media a letter written by a dissident leader to the party president. Some see the lobbyist’s hand in the protracted wrangle over the formation of the next Jharkhand government and the choice of the new chief minister.

In hot water

As Minister for Non Conventional Energy,Farooq Abdullah waxes eloquent about the advantages of solar energy. Asked by an MP in Parliament whether he himself utilises non-conventional energy sources,Abdullah said he has a solar water heating system for his bathroom. His remark,unfortunately,set off several MPs to complain that solar heaters in their government bungalows do not work. Abdullah was hard pressed to explain that it was not his ministry,but the CPWD,which was at fault for not maintaining the heaters.

Questionable timing

Top political leaders from all parties are to meet next week and finalise a new timetable for Parliament. The idea is to change the half-a-century-old precedent that the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha begin the day with question hour. Instead,Parliament business will most likely start with laying the government papers on the table of the House,followed by discussions. Both Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar and Rajya Sabha Chairperson Hamid Ansari are concerned because question hour often gets derailed by opposition MPs. As a result,answers for many questions raised by MPs never get to be heard,even though the government spends considerable time and effort to collect the desired data. By slotting question hour in the middle of the day,between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.,it is hoped that tempers will have cooled and question hour will proceed smoothly.

While he was away

While Rajnath Singh was in Jharkhand pushing the case of Arjun Munda for chief minister,BJP President Nitin Gadkari quietly installed a new party president in Singh’s home state,UP. Gadkari’s choice is the little-known Surya Pratap Shahi. The most remarkable thing about the low-key Bhumihar who was a former state minister,is that he was not on Rajnath Singh’s panel for the post. This seems to indicate that the former BJP party president’s influence is on the wane even in his home state.