Not Cong ki baari

It's funny but the usual Congress chorus for Priyanka and Rahul to contest elections is missing this time. It rose briefly when brother and ...

It’s funny but the usual Congress chorus for Priyanka and Rahul to contest elections is missing this time. It rose briefly when brother and sister made that quick, high profile trip to Amethi and Rae Bareli and then died down mysteriously. According to the Congress grapevine, the silence has something to do with the assessment that’s percolated down to the grassroots that this is not Congress ki baari (the Congress party’s turn).

At least that’s the assessment of the party’s UP unit and leaders from this all important state, who are prone to raise the demand for Priyanka at the drop of a hat, are particularly insistent that Gen Next should be preserved for better days, when Congress fortunes start rising again. As one leader said candidly, the children are the party’s Brahmastra and should only be used when the party is sure of victory. It’s ironic that although there’s plenty with which to punch holes in the BJP’s India Shining campaign, the Congress seems to have accepted defeat before the contest has begun.

In tune with BJP

Assam’s famous and much loved son, lyricist, composer and singer Bhupen Hazarika, has confounded his old Leftist friends by joining the BJP. He’s justified his decision by telling them that Vajpayee himself made the request and he couldn’t refuse. The PM has apparently offered him the Guwahati seat, although Hazarika wanted to contest from Tezpur. Vajpayee argued that it was far more important for the BJP to win Guwahati than Tezpur, which is lottery king M K Subba’s patch.

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But Vajpayee wasn’t the only factor. Sushma Swaraj has been wooing Hazarika for three years on behalf of the BJP. She ensured that he was given due recognition with the Dadasaheb Phalke award. She also nominated him to the Prasar Bharti Board. No wonder, when he arrived in Delhi to formally join the BJP, Sushma kept guard on him and made sure that he wasn’t whisked away by the Congress.

Election woes

Cricket loving politicians are a disappointed lot. They can’t go to Pakistan to watch India play in that country after a gap of nearly one-and-a-half decades because of elections. State Cricket Board heads like Sharad Pawar, Laloo Yadav and Arun Jaitley are far too busy with poll strategies and campaigns to spare time for the game.

Only two politicians have expressed a desire to go so far, Shatrughan Sinha and BCCI member Rajiv Shukla. As it happens, both are Rajya Sabha members and therefore have time to spare. In any case, Shukla is considered the Indian team’s lucky mascot. He’s being asked to show up in Karachi and Lahore for the one-dayers.

A ticket for Nafisa?

Will Page Three regular Nafisa Ali finally get her wish? West Bengal PCC chief Pranab Mukherjee is lobbying hard to get her a party ticket to fight Trinamool Congress firebrand Mamata Banerjee from South Kolkata. But Sonia Gandhi is apparently toying with the idea of getting Ali to contest against Vajpayee from Lucknow. Sonia sprung the suggestion when they met recently to discuss Ali’s political debut.

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Mukherjee, however, has made out a strong case for putting up Ali from Kolkata. It’s not just her glamourous persona versus Mamata’s streetfighter image, he’s believed to have argued, her Bengali roots will appeal to the bhadralok. Ali’s grandfather was the well-known Bengali writer S Wajid Ali whose prose is read even today in Went Bengal schools. His other immortal contribution is the term ‘‘Sonar Bangla’’. It was made famous by Rabindranath Tagore but Wajid Ali was the one who coined it for him.

Jindal’s goof-up

Businessman Navin Jindal has sparked off a raging controversy in the Congress. The day he was presented to the press as the newest member of the party, he embarrassed his mentors by singing praises of Vajpayee. Salman Khurshid had to rush Jindal out of the room and bring the press conference to an abrupt end.

A section of the party is now grumbling why the businessman was inducted in the first place. According to them, he was negotiating simultaneously with the BJP for a seat from Chhattisgarh where he has business interests and with the Congress for Haryana’s Kurukshetra seat.

The BJP refused him because he was perceived as a close friend of former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. So he made tracks to the Congress. His father, O P Jindal, is a Congress MLA in Haryana anyway. But with the campaign that’s started against him after his maiden press conference, it remains to be seen whether those who got him into the Congress can also bag him the Kurukshetra ticket.