Perhaps the biggest roadblock to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s new initiative for Kashmir is not the BJP or the RSS, but the hidebound MEA. Stuck in a time warp, the mandarins in South Block believe that smart diplomacy means needless nitpicking rather than moving forward. Last week, the MEA’s churlishness was on full display when US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage visited Delhi. First the MEA rejected the idea of a joint press conference with Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha since Armitage was a notch too junior, according to protocol. The Pakistanis did not stand on such formality and Armitage, who shared the dais with the Pak Foreign Minister, used the occasion to make a significant announcement on Kashmir terrorism.South Block was so filled with its own consequence that it was not even able to inform the US embassy till practically the last minute whether Armitage would be granted an audience with Vajpayee at all. The US embassy wanted a press conference at the Palam technical area just before the Deputy Secretary’s departure. Since it is a restricted area, the drill is that the Delhi Police has to frisk all journalists entering the enclosure. Whether by design or sheer inefficiency, the police arrived two hours late so that there was no time for the security check for the media. Armitage finally ended up addressing the media in the parking lot!Absent on Home FrontThe 57 officers from the 1969 IAS batch have been waiting expectantly since March for empanelment of the batch. A final decision on which of them will be promoted as full Secretaries to the Government of India will be taken at a meeting of senior Secretaries including the Cabinet Secretary, the Personnel Secretary, the PM’s Principal Secretary, Home Secretary and Finance Secretary. The crucial meeting has been postponed six times already, the last time this Wednesday. The delay is largely attributed to the PM’s Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra, who, because of his busy travel schedule abroad, has had little time to attend to domestic affairs.Among those slated for promotion is Ajai Prasad, OSD to Dy PM L.K. Advani, who is likely to move out of the Home Ministry after his empanelment.Sibling RivalriesPrasar Bharati Chairman M.V. Kamath points out that India could make the Guiness Book of Records for being the only country where both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are former journalists. Vajpayee was once editor of the RSS Hindi fortnightly, Panchjanya, and Advani was film critic and occasional columnist for its English counterpart, the Organiser.At the Nachiketa journalism awards ceremony last week, which was attended by both Advani and Vajapayee, editor of the Panchjanya, Tarun Vijay, was anxious to point out that both leaders were from the Panchjanya stable. Advani, however, contradicted Vijay, explaining that he wrote for the Organiser and any pieces which appeared in his name in the Panchjanya were translations. An author should know best with whom his copyright lies, but Vijay was exercised enough to rebut the Dy PM in the middle of his speech to the amusement of the audience. Perhaps traditional rivalry between the two periodicals, which persists even today, was the cause of Vijay’s disagreement. The vibes between Vijay and the Organiser editor, Seshadri Chari, are rather cool, according to insiders.Delhi’s Cow BeltIn Patna, at the Chief Minister’s residence, Laloo Yadav has almost a hundred cows alongwith sundry dogs and cats. Now, Laloo has started an animal farm at his Delhi bungalow at 25 Tuqhlak Road, purchasing two prize cows from Karnal last week. Laloo, however, forget to procure a licence from the New Delhi Municipal Committee (NDMC) for his cows, which is surprising in view of his earlier troubles. (In Patna, his political opponents had raised a hue and cry in the Assembly because Laloo had kept an elephant in his backyard without the necessary license). Rajya Sabha MP Prem Gupta, Laloo’s chief adviser in the Capital, expressed surprise at the thought that permission is required even for cows maintained not as a dairy but for the family’s personal milk supply, but assured that Laloo would put in the requisite application.The cows which yield 15-25 litres of milk daily have not been given names. Laloo points out that ‘‘Gaya maia hai’’. ‘‘How can you call your mother by any name, it would be sacrilegious.’’Questioning his StarsIs the affable Congress MP Subbirami Reddi’s ability to get far more of his queries answered in Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha than any other MP due to just plain good luck, skill or sheer persistence? Not one to hide his light under a bushel, Reddi held a press conference to proclaim that he had asked 55 starred questions and 104 unstarred questions in just 35 days in the last session, a feat which surely entitles him to be declared parliamentarian of the year.But some of Reddi’s envious colleagues who are fortunate if they manage one starred question in a week are now crying foul. To assure that everything is above board, the Parliament secretariat has of late even changed from a computerised method of picking questions at random to a lottery through ballots. If Reddi has cracked the system, it is perhaps partly because he has shrewdly employed some former parliamentary employees on his staff who know the tricks of the trade as it were.
