Three states minus govts, Raj Bhavans play guess games

on him. Indeed, he is the least known of the three Congress appointed governors whose every move is being watched today—in Ranchi, of course, and in Patna and Panjim.

A three-term Rajya Sabha MP, Razi, 66, served for a few months as Minister of State for Home in the P V Narasimha Rao government. A former Youth Congressman and one of the party’s longstanding Muslim faces in Uttar Pradesh, his strength, insiders say, is that he is from Jais, part of Amethi parliamentary constituency, from where Rajiv, Sonia and now Rahul Gandhi have been elected.

In Patna, Buta Singh seems set to face criticism irrespective of what he does—call the RJD/UPA, call the NDA or recommend president’s rule. At 71, Buta is, however, a veteran to politics’ twists and turns. A Dalit Sikh from Jalandhar, he fled to Jalore in his home state’s militancy years in the 1980s.

First becoming a minister in 1974, he rose to prominence as chairman of the 1982 Asian Games Organising Committee. His big moment came in 1986, when as Home minister he reportedly advised Rajiv Gandhi to open the locks of the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi shrine in Ayodhya. The Congress is still recovering.

	HANGING ON
			With no headway, it’s a daily crawl in these hung states BIHAR Sonia meets Paswan & Laloo man Prem Gupta. Paswan floats idea of govt with JD(U) and anti-RJD, anti-BJP parties. But JD(U) rules out leaving NDA. If it’s any consolation for Laloo, BSP 2 MLAs to go with him GOA Pro-tem Speaker Francisco Sardinha says files on disqualification of Dy CM Rodrigues are missing from Speaker’s chamber. Cong sees rumblings over induction of a BJP defector into Cabinet JHARKHAND Both NDA and UPA stake claim to form govt, say they have the numbers. Unmoved, Governor Syed Sibtey Razi says he will meet all 12 Independents on Wednesday. Angry JMM men and BJP supporters, on dharna outside Raj Bhavan, almost come to blows

By 1998, Buta was a rebel, contesting the Lok Sabha election as a BJP-backed independent. He became Communications minister in Vajpayee’s government, only to be sacked within a month, in April 1998, after the CBI chargesheeted him in the JMM bribery case.

As one of Narasimha Rao’s senior ministers, Buta was implicated in the 1993 scandal that involved inducing JMM MPs to defect to the Congress side. On being forced out of the first NDA government, Buta swore revenge and, soon enough, found his way back to the Congress. If Punjab to Patna via Rajasthan is a long way, S C Jamir, 74, can match that journey. The man in the hot seat in Goa—he dismissed a BJP-led government in February and may be forced to remove a Congress-led government in March—is a Naga veteran, who studied at Allahabad University.

Nagaland’s first MP, Jamir was parliamentary secretary as far back as 1961, in the Jawaharlal Nehru government. He became chief minister briefly in 1980, then from 1982-86 and, finally, 1993-2003, before being defeated by a BJP-regional party alliance. In this period, he presided over a series of governments singularly unable to curb corruption. He is also seen as a problem in the Centre’s attempts to talk to the NSCN (Isaac-Muivah) and is said to be propping up the rival NSCN (Khaplang) faction. Never one to miss out on the action, he’s now been accused to engineering a Raj Bhavan coup in Goa. — With Samudra Gupta Kashyap in Guwahati