Sent, not received

Saptharishi then faxed his letter to the Law Minister’s office and telephoned one of the minister’s staff to ensure that it had been received.

The letter seems to be stuck somewhere in the files of the Law Ministry, since the officer who received the letter is presumably too intimidated by Bhardwaj’s earlier dismissive response to insist on putting it on his table.

Number dropping

When he was a backbencher in Parliament, Sushil Kumar Shinde consulted an astrologer and numerologist about bettering his prospects. The pundit suggested that he should remove the number-plate of 80 from his Lodhi Road bungalow. Shinde’s stagnant career graph suddenly started looking up. He became the Opposition candidate for Vice President and later became Chief Minister of Maharashtra.

After Shinde vacated the bungalow, it was allotted to Ambica Soni who continues to live in her private house in Panchsheel Park and loaned her government accommodation to the Congress. Key strategy sessions of the party including discussions on the campaign for the parliamentary poll last year, were held there. And the bungalow without a number has brought good luck to the Congress party as well. But without the bungalow, Shinde feels he has once again gone into political oblivion as the Governor of Andhra Pradesh.

RSS disagrees again

The RSS publication Panchjanya has dubbed the BJP boycott of Parliament unwise, even if there was provocation from the ruling alliance. It is not just the RSS but the majority of the BJP MPs who opposed the move privately. The decision to boycott was taken largely by George Fernandes and L K Advani. The former wants to retaliate for the Congress’s boycott of him as defence minister and the latter seems to have run out of ideas.

Significantly, though Vajpayee is the chairman of the NDA he has not spoken on the issue.

Father India

Perhaps the reason Sunil Dutt is furious with the Congress accepting the former Sainik, Sanjay Nirupam, into the fold is that he blames Nirupam for Sena chief Bal Thackeray’s edict to Sanjay Dutt forbidding him from campaigning for his father during the parliamentary election. It was Nirupam who took Sanjay to meet Thackeray, to whom Sanjay owes a debt of gratitude for getting him out of prison. Although Nirupam was Dutt’s main rival in the parliamentary election, he insists the order to Sanjay was entirely Thackeray’s idea and he had nothing to do with it. In fact, towards the end of the campaign, Sanjay defied Thackeray’s diktat after first sending an SMS to Nirupam to explain. Nirupam, in turn, sent back an SMS saying he fully understood his sentiments as ‘‘a dad is a dad’’

Though the senior Dutt will have nothing to do with Nirupam, his son continues to be friendly. In fact, when Nirupam was organising a wrestling match in Mumbai, Sanjay promised to try and persuade his father, the sports minister, to be chief guest. When Dutt curtly declined, actor Salman Khan had to be roped in instead.

Nirupam’s makeover

Shiv Sena’s stormy petrel Sanjay Nirupam was aware that the switch from Sena to Congress would mean a radical change in attitude and behaviour. In fact, his first choice after quitting the Sena was not the Congress but Laloo’s RJD, since Nirupam, as a Bihari, is close to Laloo. It was Laloo who suggested that he should apply to the Congress for membership instead as there were no differences between the Congress and the RJD.

When the usually soft-spoken Sunil Dutt lashed out at Nirupam, the latter did not retaliate as was his wont when in the Sena. Instead, he diplomatically recited the words of a song once sung by Sunil Dutt in a movie. ‘‘Chodo kal ki batein, kal ki baat purani’’, and refused to be provoked.

Amar’s diplomacy lesson

The president of the youth wing of the Samajwadi Party, Kamal Akhtar, was very excited that his party was sending him abroad on a parliamentary delegation. But when he heard that his destination was Israel he was taken aback and demanded to be sent elsewhere. When Akhtar realised that he was not getting an alternative destination, he announced that he would go to Israel and speak out against the country. SP General Secretary Amar Singh had to tell Akhtar firmly that he could not make offending remarks against the host country. Instead, he should stress diplomatically the need for friendship between Palestine and Israel.

RJD praises NDA

For a change, the RJD had some kind words for the NDA last week. One of Laloo Prasad Yadav’s lieutenants expressed admiration that though George Fernandes was in the wrong, the NDA loyally supported him. In contrast, the UPA had not backed Laloo even when he was in the right over the issue of the resignation of the two Election Commissioners.