Inside track

The Hamirpur SP wrote to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, G.M.C. Balayogi, and the Delhi Police Commissioner, Ajai Raj Sharma, alerting them of the warrant against Chandel and enclosing a copy of the Supreme Court order, in case Chandel should try and take his oath as a new MP. But despite the advance warning, Chandel, succeeded in entering Parliament along with his party leader, Mayawati, and was sworn in without being apprehended. The Speaker and the Delhi Police Commissioner seemed to have simply looked theother way when the criminal was being sworn in. For that matter, a prominent politician is believed to have sheltered Chandel, a thakur like himself, at his residence during his visit to Delhi.

PM’s fixture
Ever since Brajesh Mishra joined as the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, there have been rumours that he would not be there for long. It was even suggested that Mishra might be made a minister of state or appointed an ambassador, to ease him out of his job. But to those making polite inquires, Mishra makes it clear he has no intention of going anywhere. In fact, while others in the PMO come and go, `Panditji’, as Mishra is referred to in ruling party circles, remains a permanent power centre.

Pramod Mahajan, who used to boast of his closeness to the PM, is no longer as frequent a visitor to the Prime Minister’s residence as he once was. Shakti Sinha, the Prime Minister’s loyal aide, who was with Vajpayee even when he was Leader of the Opposition is leaving shortly for Washington towork in the World Bank. N.K. Singh, secretary in the PMO, keeps a low profile lest someone eject him from his vantage point.

Mishra’s continued clout is evident in the selection of senior journalist, H.K. Dua, an old friend, as Press Adviser to the Prime Minister. Dua’s appointment has left the large camp of BJP media groupies peeved. They had prided themselves on their closeness to the new government and are distinctly put off to find that a scribe who has served as Press Adviser to H.D. Deve Gowda and was close to I.K. Gujral should have won the coveted job instead of known loyalists like themselves.

Division of spoils
The jumbo size of the Vajpayee ministry has meant an addition of half a dozen full secretaries to the Government of India as well, even though the Finance Ministry keeps talking about cutting back on posts. The Urban Development Ministry has now two secretaries instead of one, since poverty alleviation and urban employment have been hived off from the rest of the UDportfolio. Rural Development has similarly been divided between two full secretaries and the Surface Transport Ministry has a separate secretary for shipping and another for roads.

The new Tribal Affairs minister also has a new secretary. Bemoaning the trifurcating of the Industries Ministry, departing minister Sikandra Bakht in his farewell speech at Udyog Bhavan mournfully observed, “They have cut off my hands and my legs.”

Southern discomfort
Though the south has always been the backbone of the Congress party it has got a raw deal in the new Congress parliamentary executive. The sole representative from the south is H. Hanumanthappa, who has been made deputy leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha. On the other hand the party whips in both houses are from Bengal which returned just two MPs.

Lok Sabha Congress whip, Priyaranjan Das Munshi, has some explaining to do to his leader for only 3 out of 112 Congress MPs were present in the House to listen to Sonia Gandhi’s maidenspeech.

Incidentally, Congress MPs are already murmuring that Sonia’s speech focused far too much on personal issues such as Bofors and her late husband, while largely ignoring the real people-oriented issues such as the diesel price hike and the fact that the cyclone was to hit Orissa that very evening.

No thanks
A leading hotel chain offered to look after the toilets at the international airports for free so that visitors to India would not get a poor impression of the country. The request was turned down, not because there was an objection to the privatisation of this basic facility, but because spanking clean loos would only show up the poor state of the rest of the airport!