Inside track — Enemies Within and Without

Since it was Surjeet who masterminded the CBI conspiracy to hastily file the charge-sheet and leak it to both the Press and the BJP, he was naturally piqued with Chatterjee, considered close to Jyoti Basu. Surjeet’s agenda at present is to topple I.K. Gujral’s government since he no longer calls the shots within the UF and believes the Prime Minister will eventually ally with the Congress.

Surjeet liaises with Joginder Singh through his proxy minister, Balwant Singh Ramoowallia. The sabotage tactics against the Government within a week of Gujral taking over are remarkably similar to the back-dated CBI charge-sheet filed against Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s then special secretary, Bikramjit Singh, just three days after the Akali Government came to power in the state. But then the brain behind both the operations was the same!

Although Vajpayee signed the letter to Gujral, urging him not to protect Laloo, it was Advani’s men who drafted the missive on the basis of the CBI report handed to them through an intermediary. Since the drafter stupidly gave the game away by lifting blindly from the charge-sheet and referring to Laloo as the accused number 24, Vajpayee is understandably annoyed.

Jaya Jaya Hai

JAYALALITHA minus bindi, powder, lipstick and her hallmark cape is anchoring a chat show on Vijay Mallya’s Vijay TV every Sunday between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. The new image of a downtrodden Jaya is a tremendous hit with slum dwellers.

Jaya uses the forum to highlight her pathetic plight. Asked why she doesn’t wear a wristwatch, she explains that the state CID took away all her 40 watches and when she asked to keep two, they spread the canard that her Swiss bank number was inscribed on it and refused to give them to her.

Jayalalitha even shed a few tears over Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi preventing a fellow Tamil like G.K. Moopanar from becoming PM. Sensing a winner, her old foe, Y. Gopalasamy of the MDMK, has now agreed to join forces with her.

Meanwhile, Karunanidhi, in a bid to counter Jayalalitha, is contemplating hosting a poetry competition on his grandnephew Kalanidhi Maran’s Sun TV.

Out of Sync

C.M. Ibrahim’s replacement in the I&B Ministry, Jaipal Reddy, is like Gujral a member of the India International Centre’s Saturday Club and the only JD Cabinet member on the same wavelength as the PM. The gentlemanly Gujral is already unnerved by the bad behaviour of his party members. At a dinner after the swearing-in of the new Cabinet, former PM H.D. Deve Gowda yelled publicly at Gujral. Fellow Kannadiga S.R. Bommai finally had to take Gowda aside to pacify him.

As for Laloo, even before the charge-sheet leak, he was berating the new PM right royally in public. That Gujral was unfit to win even a municipal election is the mildest of Laloo’s observations!

Buffalo Blunder

Those in charge of the 8.30 p.m. news bulletin on Doordarshan last Sunday were kept in the dark till the last moment about the lead news for fear of it leaking to the Gujral camp. The result was that the flustered DD staff mixed up the visuals to go with the news. When the news of Laloo being chargesheeted was announced, a buffalo came on screen. When Central Minister C.P. Verma’s name was mentioned, another buffalo appeared, and when the announcer disclosed that 56 people were being chargesheeted, a horde of buffaloes was shown!