Inside Track

But the final report has ended in a whimper with less than 2,000 words in two volumes, one of which consists merely of annexures. The insinuations against all and sundry are missing this time. According to insiders, the final report reads very jerkily and at times is somewhat incoherent. Because of the barrage of criticism against his earlier report, M.C. Jain developed cold feet. He came out of hospital last December a mellowed man and kept ordering his staff to excise large chunks from different parts of the text which he had earlier dictated, explaining that he did not want any controversy. In the bargain, no proper blame has been apportioned, not even for theappalling lapse by the IB which failed to decipher in time an intercepted message from the LTTE detailing the plan to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.

Cynics feel that the tame final Jain report may also be due to the fact that Arjun Singh’s lieutenant H.R. Bhardwaj was no longer interested in creating trouble, since the requisite damage had been done by the interim report.

Singh’s detractors in the Congress claim that despite the turmoil he stirred up almost single-handedly, the Machiavelli from Madhya Pradesh did not even succeed in his primary objective of getting back to Parliament.

New master’s voice

While the Gujral Government at least kept up the pretence of non-interference in Prasar Bharati, the new Government doesn’t believe in retaining even the fig leaf. The Minister of State for I&B M.A. Naqvi is to visit DD’s Delhi kendra next Tuesday and a circular has been issued to the staff to get the place ready for an inspection on war-footing. What is a matter of particular concern is that Naqviwill be meeting all the senior DD staff involved in preparing news bulletins, which he has no ethical right to do considering that Prasar Bharati now has pretensions of being an independent body.

The Prasar Bharati CEO, S.S. Gill, whose job is on the line is anxious to demonstrate to the new regime that he can be relied upon to do their bidding. Already DD news programmes are back to the old days when coverage of the prime minister’s speeches was mandatory. A standby team of DD is posted on duty daily at the PM’s residence. I&B Minister Sushma Swaraj must be chuckling silently. If the BJP’s critics protest against the governmental bias on DD, she has simply to point out that it was the Gujral Government which selected the man in charge.

Costly nap

The new Agriculture Minister Surjit Singh Barnala has demanded an attached bedroom and toilet with his Shastri Bhawan office so that he can take his afternoon snooze. A joint secretary has been asked to clear out of the adjacent room which is to beconverted into a bedroom. The elaborate transformation involves laying a special pipe to the sewerage connection on the ground floor. Senior Shastri Bhawan officials are particularly peeved since a new septic tank is being dug on the VIP car parking lot.

Incidentally, since the limit on refurbishing an office of a minister is Rs 35,000, the remaining sum will be billed to the public sector undertakings controlled by the ministry.

Role reversal

The Ministry for Urban Development has sent stern notices to MPs who lost the elections to vacate their government bungalows as there is a long queue of new MPs waiting for accommodation. But some defeated MPs are dragging their feet. They claim they are taking their cue from the Minister, Ram Jethmalani, who himself refused to give up his house on Harish Chandra Mathur Lane after his earlier Rajya Sabha membership had expired. Jethmalani stayed on unauthorisedly for some six months and filed a suit in the court claiming he had rights as a tenant. The suitwas finally dismissed by the court which termed it as vexatious litigation.

Dead end

The much-publicised CBI probe which was to discover who leaked the interim Jain report to the press has proved to be a damp squib. The CBI team has not even bothered to cross-question those journalists who carried extracts of the report in their publications before the official release. Though M.C. Jain was not interrogated, his secretary and some of the investigating officers were. It turns out that the Jain Commission had handed over a copy of the interim report to the Home Ministry in early October and the ministry then demanded a second copy, which was xeroxed and the relevant portions passed on to various departments in the CBI, IB, RAW and MEA, making it near impossible to apportion the blame.