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Non-resident minister

The new Railway Minister Mukul Roy has decided to follow in the footsteps of his party leader Mamata Banerjee and unofficially re-locate the Railway Ministry to Kolkata. Roy is seldom seen in Delhi after he took up his new assignment as he is busy with party affairs in West Bengal. It appears that Railway Ministry files will keep shuttling between Kolkata and the national Capital as they did during Banerjee’s tenure.

General interest

The Task Force on National Security has asked for a two-month extension due to a delay in filing some reports by sub-groups. Of late,the main topic of discussion at meetings is the confrontation between General V K Singh and the Ministry of Defence. Retired diplomats,bureaucrats and army officers have had heated exchanges on the subject. Some members have suggested that in the light of General Singh’s complaints about delays and corruption in army procurement,senior army officers should be accommodated in the Ministry of Defence and associated in the final decision-making process.

Not yet accepted

After the disastrous showing in the Bihar Assembly polls more than a year ago,the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Mehboob Ali Kaiser offered to step down. But Kaiser’s resignation has yet to be formally accepted. With Kaiser’s position uncertain,the state unit is effectively leaderless. Will the same sorry state of affairs repeat itself in UP and Punjab,where resignations of PCC chiefs Rita Bahuguna and Amarinder Singh are yet to be accepted? True,Rahul Gandhi has called for a meeting to introspect on the party’s performance in UP but it remains to be seen whether any concrete measures will emerge.

Wily partner

A section of the Congress is deeply suspicious of the NCP since it is never sure just what its wily alliance partner is up to. The Maharashtra Congress is still smarting from the slick manner in which the NCP went behind the Congress’s back and tied up with the Opposition parties,Shiv Sena,BJP and MNS,to gain control of a large number of zila parishads. Although the Congress and the NCP performed comparably in the zila parishad elections,the Congress now controls only seven zila parishads while the NCP,thanks to shrewd negotiations with other parties,has taken charge of thirteen. In Ratnagiri,the Shiv Sena could not install its member as president since under the rule,the pradhan had to be a woman SC leader. The NCP provided a suitable candidate to the Sena.

Open warfare

The differences in the BJP high command have come to the fore in the Rajya Sabha elections in Jharkhand. Ranged on one side are L K Advani,Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Sinha from the party’s parliamentary board and on the other side is BJP president Nitin Gadkari. The first clash was over support to controversial NRI Anshuman Mishra. The next bone of contention was whether the BJP MLAs should have voted in the Rajya Sabha elections for JMM candidate Sanjeev Kumar,after the BJP had decided to abstain from voting. Gadkari says he reversed the party decision on pragmatic grounds since the JMM was threatening to revolt if the BJP did not back its candidate. In what is perceived as a dig at Gadkari,Advani in his blog applauded the Election Commission for cancelling the RS election in Jharkhand,although the state unit has come out sharply against the EC. Sinha has asked the EC to investigate if money changed hands when BJP MLAs signed Mishra’s nomination papers. Swaraj,meanwhile,is fuming because S S Ahluwallia was not re-nominated from Jharkhand after he failed to secure a nomination from Bihar.