The appointment of S Narayan to the PMO was made in the absence of the powerful additional secretary in the PMO, Ashok Saikia, who had reportedly objected earlier to the induction of the retired finance secretary. Saikia felt his appointment would send the wrong signals to the bureaucracy and the business world. The 1971 Assam cadre officer, who has a very old and close association with Vajpayee, is in the US attending a course at Harvard University and has extended his stay following news of Narayan’s appointment. He has requested Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi for a posting in his home state, indicating that he is contemplating quitting his present job which he has held ever since Vajpayee took office in 1998.Digvijay’s strong medicineAt an election strategy session chaired by Manmohan Singh prior to the Srinagar conclave, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in his presentation expressed confidence in winning the polls despite the gloomy poll forecasts. Singh’s solution to fight the anti-incumbency handicap was to change some 80 per cent of Congress’s sitting MLAs. His radical proposal was to replace professional politicians with those popular in their areas such as the heads of NGOs. Not surprisingly his suggestion has not gone down well with his party men who point out that this would merely lead to a rash of rebel candidates. An easier way to overcome the incumbency factor is to replace Singh himself, they comment sarcastically.Last week, Singh’s political rival in the state, Kamal Nath, escorted Congress general secretary Ambica Soni to his Chindwara constituency to demonstrate the good work he has done in his pocket borough compared to the rest of Madhya Pradesh.Companionable SilenceThe home secretary, the director of IB, the DPM’s OSD, the DPM’s private secretary and the joint secretary (America) who allowed their wives to accompany them on the official trip with L K Advani to the US were merely availing of a perk which has long been the prerogative of senior bureaucrats. Joint secretaries and above are entitled to travel by executive class and Air-India offers a one-plus-one incentive scheme whereby any business class passenger can get a free ordinary class ticket for a companion.This is a bonus for the bureaucracy which CVC P Shankar and his predecessors N Vittal, and S V Giri have questioned. Their point is that since the scheme is meant as an incentive to travel by the airlines, it makes no sense to allow government officials to avail of the benefit as they are supposed to travel by the national carrier anyway. In any case there is no cash transfer in such ticket payments. It is just book entries from one government department to another. The CVC’s office has written to the secretary civil aviation on the ticklish question, but there is a silence on that front.Smoking them outHealth Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is also the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, has recommended banning smoking in Parliament House except in a designated smoking room. But the final decision on the ban is up to Speaker Manohar Joshi and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Bhairon Singh Shekhawat since the Parliament premises are under their jurisdiction.But the pressure to prohibit smoking is mounting. In the last session in the Lok Sabha Varkala Radhakrishnan, a Kerala CPI(M) MP, pleaded passionately that parliamentarians should set an example to others. His concern is understandable considering that the Left tends to spawn more smokers than other those of ideologies, probably because it was a cult among Marxist youth to discuss dialectical materialism in smoke-filled cafes. The earlier generation of Marxists, such as Indrajeet Gupta, Pramod Das Gupta and Bhupesh Gupta were heavy smokers. Among present day MPs, Nilotpal Basu is a chain smoker and Abani Roy of the RSP hands out cigarettes to the media as a friendly gesture whenever he chats with them.When in RomeDuring her visit to the Capital last week Jayalalithaa was surrounded by journalists from her home state posing queries in Tamil. Declining to give a sound byte to the TV cameras in her native tongue, Jayalalithaa explained, ‘‘When I am in Delhi I will speak in English.’’ A correspondent from a north Indian news channel inquired timidly whether the CM, known to be extremely haughty on occasion, would reply to his question in Hindi. Jayalalithaa responded cordially in the rashtra bhasha. When Finance Minister Jaswant Singh called on Jayalalithaa in Delhi she even graciously inquired about his health in Hindi.Family patch-up firstCongress general secretary Oscar Fernandes asserted confidently to a TV channel last week that his party would be announcing a political tie-up in Tamil Nadu shortly. But the potential Congress partner, DMK boss M Karunanidhi is more concerned at present with bringing about a patch up in his own family, than a rapprochement with the Congress. Azhagiri, Karunanidhi’s son from his first wife, and former Chennai mayor M K Stalin, his offspring from his second wife have never got on. But after Jayalalithaa put Azhagiri in jail, Stalin paid a visit to his estranged brother at his father’s behest.The one member of the family with whom Jayalalithaa has established a truce of sorts is Karunanidhi’s grand nephew Kalanidhi Maran, Murasoli Maran’s son who runs the premier television channel in the state. Kalanidhi’s Sun TV refrains from dabbling in the politics of the Dravidian parties.
