Many of his cabinet colleagues are furious with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for publicly admonishing S M Krishna and Shashi Tharoor. They felt Mukherjee could have instead conveyed the message of moving out of the five star hotels to them privately. At Thursday’s Cabinet meeting, when the new austerity measure of ministers travelling only by economy class on commercial flights was discussed, DMK’s Dayanidhi Maran mentioned that along with the PM, three cabinet ministers, A K Antony, P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, had the luxury of travelling by a special aircraft. Maran was put up by some younger Cabinet ministers who point out privately that while Antony and Chidambaram get their exclusive privilege because of the small aircraft attached to their ministries, Mukherjee is permitted a special aircraft in his individual capacity. In response to his detractors’ whisper campaign, Mukherjee announced on Friday that he would be travelling to Kolkata in economy class by Jet Lite.

Paying the price

Because of Jaswant Singh’s refusal to step down as Public Accounts Committee chairperson, Yashwant Sinha, another BJP sulker, is paying the price. Sinha has not been appointed chairperson of any of the other four parliamentary committees headed by a BJP MP. In fact, he has not even been accommodated in the Finance and External affairs committees, though he has held both ministerial portfolios. The BJP clearly apprehends that Sinha too might leave the party and does not want another post to slip out of its control.

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