Opinion Unfare reason

Divided House

In the selection of Rajya Sabha nominees,senior BJP leaders crossed swords with one another. Arun Jaitley was keen on Nirmala Seetharaman while Sushma Swaraj was opposed to her nomination. L K Advani was insistent on Najma Heptullah. Swaraj wanted S S Ahluwalia but Nitin Gadkari was reluctant. Hema Malini lost out though she had Gadkari’s backing. It was,however,Gadkari’s support for the independent candidate from Jharkhand,Anshuman Mishra,which created the most acrimony. An NRI businessman with controversial antecedents,it was Amar Singh who introduced Mishra to politics. The two later fell out. Actually,Mishra only approached the BJP central leadership after first tying up support at the local level. Jharkhand BJP MLAs,who have allegedly benefited from Mishra’s largesse,are up in arms over the decision not to back Mishra which could affect the stability of the Munda government. No one in the parliamentary committee questioned the qualifications of Gadkari’s good friend Ajay Sancheti since he happens to be close to the RSS. Sancheti came to public notice when it was found that his driver owns a flat in the controversial Adarsh housing society.

No permission

Pawan Bansal and Motilal Vohra from the Congress sat on one side of Mulayam Singh Yadav at the swearing-in ceremony of Akhilesh Yadav as UP chief minister. Sultan Ahmed,the Trinamool Congress MP who is minister of state for tourism,sat on the other side of the SP leader. Bansal,who had flown to Lucknow on a special aircraft,offered Ahmed a seat on the plane for the return journey to Delhi. But at the time of departure,Ahmed was missing. It is believed that Ahmed telephoned his boss,Mamata Banerjee,to check if it would be okay for him to take a lift. Clearly,he did not get her nod.

No following CPM

The CPI(M) walked out of the Rajya Sabha in protest against the government’s reference to the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in the President’s address. But the CPI’s D Raja continued to sit in the House. Peeved CPI(M) MPs,accustomed to the CPI following them blindly,claimed cattily that Raja had stayed behind because he wanted to curry favour with Jayalalithaa since the next item on the agenda was an AIADMK resolution demanding a division on support for the US-sponsored UN resolution against Sri Lanka. His fellow communists claimed Raja’s term expires next year and he needs the AIADMK votes to get re-elected. In fact,Raja is aware that since his current term in the Rajya Sabha was facilitated by the DMK,the AIADMK is unlikely to back him for a second term.

Mamata’s chit chat

During her visit to Delhi last week,Mamata Banerjee spent considerable time in Parliament’s Central Hall chatting with MPs and the media. A journalist asked whether former West Bengal Governor Gopal Gandhi’s name was in the running for President. Banerjee replied that no one had spoken to her on the subject. Someone else inquired whether Sam Pitroda was being considered for the President’s post. Banerjee turned to Trivedi,who was sitting near her and said sarcastically,“Why don’t you ask him? He would know better.” With Trivedi out of the railway ministry,his successor Mukul Roy has lost no time in disbanding the committee for the modernisation of the railways,which was headed by Trivedi’s good friend,Pitroda. Incidentally,there was some curiosity whether Trivedi would vote for a rollback in fares which he himself had proposed. If Trivedi had defied his party whip,he was liable to forfeit his Lok Sabha seat. Trivedi did not have to face this dilemma since there was no vote on the issue with the government itself deciding on a rollback of second-class fares.