Opinion Asking to be refused

Editorial licence

The autobiographies of four leading editors will be published this year. The distinguished scribes have all lived through interesting times and one can expect some juicy nuggets from the past. Kuldip Nayar’s One Lifetime Is Not Enough will include details of his eventful time as Lal Bahadur Shastri’s media advisor and the Emergency years when Indira Gandhi put him in jail. Jug Suraiya of The Times of India has aptly termed his memoirs JS & the Times of My life. Nihal Singh has yet to make up his mind on his title,but the former editor of The Indian Express and The Statesman is veering around to the name Nihal Singh: A Life. Vinod Mehta is thinking of calling his book Lucknow Boy in acknowledgement of his roots. Mehta believes the information he obtained recently from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist,Seymour Hersh,about India,will prove to be explosive. Hersh had once claimed that there was a CIA mole in Nehru’s Cabinet.

Two pronged attack

There is a widespread belief in political circles in Andhra that TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao and Congress rebel Jagan Reddy have a secret understanding to bring down the state government. Congresspersons claim that the TRS has an anonymous well-heeled backer and point out that when Rao launched a fast-to-death for Telangana in November 2009,Jagan Reddy supporters were present in the crowd of Osmania University students persuading KCR not to withdraw his fast. Although Rao has denied the allegation,some of his own statements have added grist to the rumour mill. Recently in Warangal before a crowd of one lakh,KCR declared that YSR’s son was the only Congress leader who could attract crowds in the state. At the TRS state executive in December last year,KCR declared that there would definitely be a mid-term poll and his party would sweep the Telangana region and Jagan Reddy would defeat the Congress in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema.

MEA drags feet

Asaduddin Owaisi,the MIM MP from Hyderabad,was invited by the Pugwash Foundation for a peace conference in Islamabad. The necessary clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs came through at the eleventh hour and that too grudgingly. The MEA in its letter advised against his attending the meet as it feared many contentious issues could crop up causing controversies. Surely it is in the MEA’s interest to encourage an independent Muslim MP from India helping in the peace process and putting across the Indian case?

Star-struck Jaya

Before she summoned the general council of the AIADMK on December 30,Jayalalitha consulted an astrologer for fixing the exact time and place for the conference. The meeting began at the odd timing of 3.42 p.m. and precisely six minutes later,Jayalalitha started to read out her speech. According to the political grapevine,the AIADMK supremo consults a soothsayer before making key moves in the run-up to the assembly poll. Jaya hopes that popular film star Vijayakanth will tie up with her. In fact,she has already found out the auspicious time,after Pongal,and the right venue,her home,for announcing the alliance.

All atwitter

Sushma Swaraj is the latest politician to start tweeting and within a month,she already has over 8,000 followers. Swaraj has two accounts on Twitter: one for the general public and another for journalists who can get responses to their queries. Her secretariat checks the names and accreditation card numbers to make sure that the questioners are genuine journalists. Swaraj is following in the footsteps of other internet-savvy leaders in her party like L K Advani and Narendra Modi. Advani frequently puts out a blog on Sundays,while Modi has some 80,000 followers on Twitter. The BJP leadership may have more tweeters than the Congress but none from the Opposition can outdo the Congress’s Shashi Tharoor who has a phenomenal Twitter following of some 10 lakh.