Delhi Confidential: School of politics

“I was a Ph.D in the Congress but I was not considered for even the post of a lecturer or Reader (in the UPA government)."

SCHOOL OF POLITICS

As Jagdambika Pal, who was re-elected from Domariaganj constituency, was about to enter Parliament for the BJP’s Parliamentary Party meeting on Tuesday, he was reminded of his “timely” move from the Congress to the BJP. The leader, who had been in the Congress for 47 years before switching loyalty and who has the unique distinction of being the Uttar Pradesh CM for a day, quipped, “I was a Ph.D in the Congress but I was not considered for even the post of a lecturer or Reader (in the UPA government). Here (in NDA government), I am still in nursery . I don’t expect anything.”

FAIR PLAY
A day before the election results were announced, Urban Development (UD) Minister Kamal Nath cleared out-of-turn allotment of flats for 15 officials. This has been put on hold by UD secretary Sudhir Krishna who has objected to the proposals having been mooted by the minister’s office when he is on way out. Krishna would like Nath’s successor to decide on these allotments. The UD secretary, who retires in June, had in February last stirred a hornet’s nest shooting off a letter to complain about finance minister P Chidambaram’s behaviour during a meeting — a charge that had been denied by other officials.

NOTA TOLL

Unforseen factors also contributed to electoral fortunes of some leaders. Senior BJP leader and party spokesperson Shahnawaj Hussain, who was the lone Muslim MP for the BJP in the outgoing Lok Sabha, is one such leader. What must be rankling Hussain is that while he lost elections to RJD candidate by 9,845 votes, there were 11,875 votes cast for NOTA (none of the above). He appears to be the first high profile victim of NOTA that was introduced in this Lok Sabha elections after the Assembly elections late last year.

CLOSE CALL

OF the 44 Congressmen who were elected to the 16th Lok Sabha, as many as 14 won with a margin of less than 20,000 votes. Of these, seven had a margin less than 10,000 votes. B V Nayak, who won from Raichur in Karnataka had the lowest victory margin of 1,499 votes followed by Rajeev Shankarrao Satav who won from the Hingoli seat in Maharashtra by 1,632 votes. The highest victory margin for a Congressman belonged to Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury who won the Baharampur seat in West Bengal with margin of 3.56 lakh, bettering Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s victory margin of 3.52 lakh from Rae Bareli.