With the government intent on holding Lok Sabha elections before the summer sets in, it’s become crucial who the next chief election commissioner will be. The powers that be don’t want to risk another M.S. Gill, who refused the Vajpayee government the luxury of a quick poll after it fell in April 1999. Or a J.M. Lyngdoh, who put paid to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s gambit of forcing early elections by prematurely dissolving the assembly. As it turns out, the BJP benefited both times by winning decisively despite all its apprehensions. Still, it’s not taking any risks now. The man who appears most likely to succeed Lyngdoh is former cabinet secretary T.R. Prasad. He served the establishment well, did not ruffle any feathers and stayed away from controversy. In short, he was the quintessential bureaucrat. Apart from the comfortable equation he established with his political masters, his backers in the government point out his appointment would also bypass the seniority problem that may arise with the two serving election commissioners. Although T.S. Krishnamurthy can claim to have served longer in the EC, he and B.B. Tandon, the other election commissioner, are junior to Prasad in the civil service hierarchy. Prasad belongs to the 1963 batch of the IAS while Tandon is from the 1965 batch. Krishnamurthy is a 1963 batch officer but from the Revenue Service, which gives him a handicap of two years. Uma keeps Advani waiting Madhya Pradesh’s new Chief Minister Uma Bharati seems to be allowing her devotion to religion and spiritual leaders get in the way of her political duties. It certainly got her into trouble with L.K. Advani when she was in the Capital recently. She had come for an official meeting with Surface Transport Minister B.C. Khanduri to discuss road projects for her state. After the meeting, she was scheduled to call on Advani. However, she suddenly got summons from one of her spiritual gurus who wanted to meet her immediately. Bharati sent word to Advani that she could not meet him and set off to meet the guru. The deputy prime minister was outraged. The entire media was waiting for a photo op. Bharati was ordered back and, to her chagrin, Advani aides ticked her off in front of the waiting correspondents. Bansi Lal’s new fan club After Tamil Nadu, where it’s in the process of exchanging the DMK for the AIADMK, the BJP is getting set to switch partners in Haryana as well. It’s going back to its old flame, the Haryana Vikas Parishad, with which it allied in the 1998 polls before dumping it for Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD in 1999. HVP chief Bansi Lal’s only condition is the BJP must snap ties with Chautala before finalising a pre-poll alliance with him. Fearing it will sink along with Chautala in an anti-incumbency wave, the BJP appears ready to agree. A final decision will be announced when the national executive meets in Hyderabad. Ironically, the Congress is pursuing Lal too. Senior leader Arjun Singh is believed to have offered him a pre-poll pact. With coalitions becoming the order of the day, regional leaders are in high demand. That night in Goa Liquor baron and Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) Vijay Mallya’s New Year’s eve party in Goa was the star attraction for the jet set. But the most unlikely guest was India’s ambassador-at-large in the United States, the pointsman of the RSS for the NRI community, Bhishma Agnihotri. Agnihotri was apparently holidaying in Goa with old saffron comrade Kedar Nath Sahani, now governor there. Although Agnihotri and Mallya are not acquainted, an invitation for the party reached Raj Bhavan. Sahani stayed away but Agnihotri went and, according to reports, enjoyed himself thoroughly, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary Pramod Mahajan, Congress MPs Suresh Kalmadi and Rajiv Shukla, Civil Aviation Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, NCP MP Praful Patel, BJP MP Sangeeta Singh Deo and industrialist Mukesh Ambani.
