No duffer, no buffer

No duffer, no buffer

The Congress gag order on Digvijaya Singh, stating that he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the party, is a trifle unfair. The party general secretary has always made it clear that he speaks for himself and not the party. In fact, he claims modestly to be quite out of the loop in the party's decision making process. "I would be the last one to know what is happening,'' he remarked to me. "There is a core group which is the inner circle, then a buffer group, then a duffer group and finally a loafer group. I belong to the last category.'' Singh can afford to defy the high command's diktat because of his closeness to both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. Although his strong positions—recently he described Mamata Banerjee as erratic and immature and declared that the Congress's patience with her was running out—may not be the official line but it usually reflects the actual thinking at 10 Janpath, even if not voiced publicly.

Unbridgeable gap

Apprehending that Mulayam Singh Yadav is not completely dependable, the Congress does not want to put all its eggs in one basket by allowing Mamata Banerjee to quit the UPA just yet. The West Bengal Congress has been asked to tone down its tirade against Banerjee and not precipitate the crisis. AICC in-charge of West Bengal, Shakeel Ahmed, denied that Banerjee had crossed the line when she suggested Manmohan Singh's name for president. "Mamata is our valued ally and will remain our valued ally,'' he said. Now that Kalam is not in the race, the Congress believes it can persuade Banerjee to vote for Pranab Mukherjee. Mukherjee's additional private secretary, Pradyut Guha, has been sending a series of SMS messages to the TMC chief. Despite the conciliatory noises, the break cannot be mended completely thanks to Banerjee's own tempestuous behaviour. On her Facebook campaign for Kalam as president, the TMC chief claimed she was a victim of Machiavellian politics. In a meeting with party MLAs and MPs, she referred to the "Italian mafia''. A guessing game is afoot as to who in the TMC prompted her to make these unfortunate allusions.

... contd.

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