There are at least eight ministers in Manmohan Singh’s government who have dual responsibilities. Along with their official duties, they have to attend to important party work, since they are either office-bearers or in charge of state units. The list of those holding more than one post — in some cases while handling two ministerial portfolios — includes Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Prithviraj Chavan, Oscar Fernandes, Ajay Maken, Shakeel Ahmed, Jairam Ramesh, Saifuddin Soz and Suresh Pachauri. Whatever happened to the old Congress dictum about one person, one post? When a senior party functionary was asked about this aberration, he dismissed it with the remark, “Where is the rule in the party constitution?” Not budgeting his words Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s budget speech this year took almost two hours, and by the end of it, most MPs were extremely fidgety. MPs joked that Lalu did not just set a record for the longest railway budget speech in the last 50 years, he also ensured that he would hold the record for the next half century as well. It was Lalu’s hour of glory and he wanted to savour it for as long as possible, since it could be his last budget speech. The minister made sure to add a couple of Laluisms to the bald statistics, such as the memorable “chak de railway” line In Parliament, wherever Lalu went after reading the budget speech, he was trailed by an entourage of party men and officials, which far outnumbered those of the prime minister and Sonia Gandhi. Woman power To the consternation of their male colleagues, women MPs in the Rajya Sabha are united on gender issues regardless of party affiliations. With the CPM’s Brinda Karat taking the initiative, an all-party delegation of women MPs from the Upper House called on the Rajya Sabha Chairperson Hamid Ansari last week, demanding that in each session, one woman-specific short-notice discussion should be taken up. For the current session, the topic of self-help groups for women was proposed. A sympathetic Ansari said he would refer the request to the Business Advisory Committee. Short on smiles The customary pre-budget dinner hosted by the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, Hamid Ansari, for leaders of various political parties was wound up in an hour without much time for the usual pleasantries. The dampener on the proceedings was that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was tight lipped, and in a hurry to leave. BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi tried to lighten the mood by cracking a joke. He noted that he had just returned from Madhya Pradesh and seen many cut-outs of a beaming Suresh Pachauri, who was recently appointed PCC chief, but Pachauri remained unsmiling at the dinner. The Minister for Personnel & Parliament Affairs clearly had other things on his mind. Not dealt out The buzz in Parliament this session is that general elections ahead of schedule are on the cards. MPs who had earlier assumed that the government had given up on the nuclear deal now feel it could be operationalised. It was not President Pratibha Patil’s reference to the deal in her opening address to Parliament, the US Ambassador Mulford’s remarks, the recent visits of the US Defence Secretary and other important American dignitaries that have made many do a re-think. It was the fact that our envoy in the US Ronen Sen has been given a year’s extension. Sen had earlier declined to stay on because he felt the nuclear deal was falling through. Obviously, he now believes that there is a chance of pushing the deal through at long last. The budget only re-confirmed this suspicion.
