Opinion Mind your language

Insecure environment

One reason why former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s principal secretary and former National Security Adviser,Brajesh Mishra,moved out of his flat in the IFS Apartments in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar was because of the noise and dust. A metro station was being built right in front of his apartment block. Mishra shifted to Vasant Vihar,but he now faces a similar problem. The flat upstairs has been bought by one of Delhi’s power couple who are doing it up in style. On the second floor,an elected representative from the south is also carrying out extensive renovations.

Radia in making

Niira Radia was in the public eye thanks to the stir created by the Radia tapes. But another high-power woman public relations consultant for a major corporation who operates from Delhi,has not yet come to public notice,although she,like Radia,has formidable contacts in the government. At a recent party in her new flat in Vasant Vihar,at least three central ministers were present,one of them enthusiastically reciting Urdu couplets.

Retreat from firing line

As External Affairs Minister,S M Krishna was expected to respond to the WikiLeaks debate in the Lok Sabha last Thursday. But Krishna firmly declined to do so and breaking tradition,insisted that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee field the Opposition’s onslaught. Krishna took the plea that Mukherjee was External Minister for the period when the no confidence vote on the nuclear deal was taken up and that he was better equipped to handle the matter.

Not so tweet

After her famous tweet letting the PM off the hook saying,“Let matters rest,” BJP president Nitin Gadkari has indicated to Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj that in future she should not tweet on policy issues until she has first cleared her stand with the party. Swaraj has,however,made it clear that she has no intention of discontinuing tweeting. Taking a dig at rivals in her party,she said she would prefer to tweet openly rather than indulge in backbiting in off-the-record briefings. That there are differences between the BJP’s top leadership in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha is clear from the fact that Swaraj and Arun Jaitley do not always coordinate their strategy on the issues to focus on in the House.

Single region representation

Murmurs in the Congress about ill-considered appointments to posts by the party leadership continue. For instance,all three top positions on gender matters have been hogged by women from Rajasthan. Prabha Thakur is president of the All India Mahila Congress,Chandresh Kumari heads the parliamentary Standing Committee on Women’s Empowerment and Girija Vyas is chairperson for the National Commission for Women.

Pride goes before fall

Former Prasar Bharati CEO B S Lalli,who lost his job and has the CBI breathing down his neck,once assumed he was invincible,presuming he had the PMO’s backing. Lalli was so arrogant that when the Ministry of I&B forwarded complaints from MPs about Doordarshan,Lalli simply sent word that he was too busy to look through them. When the minister,Ambika Soni,requested him to brief her on Prasar Bharati before she spoke on the issue in Parliament,Lalli resisted,saying he had already spoken to the Cabinet secretary and the Prime Minister’s special secretary,so he saw no need to meet the minister.

Praise indeed

Mani Shankar Aiyar specialises in biting comments against the BJP. So,BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ravi Shankar Prasad was touched to receive a letter from his party’s trenchant critic,congratulating him on his budget speech. Aiyar asked for a copy of the speech,stating that it was the best critique he had heard of an annual budget in his 20 years in Parliament.