Alvida Alva, hello Digvijay

Actually when Alva spoke about double standards in the way tickets were distributed, she did have a point. As head of the screening committee for tickets for the Karnataka elections, Digvijay Singh had ignored the suggestions of several Karnataka heavyweights, including Alva, claiming their judgement was clouded by partisanship and nepotism. On the other hand, in the allocation of tickets in Madhya Pradesh, Veerappa Moily, who chaired the selection committee, relied largely on inputs from Digvijay Singh and Kamal Nath. The two Madhya Pradesh leaders not only ensured that political families were well represented, but they even saw to it that their rival in the state, Jyotiraditya Scindia, had no say except in the Gwalior belt. Arjun Singh too was kept out in the cold.

Those who expect accounts of mahjong sessions and garden parties in Nilima Lambah’s book, Recollections of a Diplomat’s Wife, are in for surprise. The wife of Satinder Lambah, the popular former ambassador to Pakistan, Russia and Germany, gives an insider’s account of diplomacy that makes it a rivetting read. The book is replete with interesting nuggets of information. For instance, the late RAW chief R.N. Kao disguised as a paan trader to meet Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Bangladesh shortly before his assassination in 1975 and warn him that his military officers were planning a coup and his life was in danger. Rahman refused to believe him. Lambah also confirms that the Pakistani authorities quietly passed on a pistol to the Khalistanis who had hijacked the Delhi-Srinagar Indian Airlines plane to Lahore in 1981.

Then there are some interesting bits on Shivraj Patil. Apparently, as MoS for External Affairs he was so self-effacing that he said he would arrange for extra chairs for VIPs at Indira Gandhi’s funeral while Satinder Lambah remained to greet the foreign dignitaries since he would be better at recognising them.

... contd.