After the sex videotape, there’s talk of another sleaze scandal concerning the BJP party office in Delhi. Journalists on the BJP beat are speculating on the mysterious disappearance of a young man who till recently worked in a junior capacity in the BJP’s media cell. The missing man is reported to have written a letter to BJP president Rajnath Singh, accusing two senior pracharaks of harassing him. Singh has kept the contents of the letter to himself. But since the young man made an appearance at the Delhi Press Club before leaving the capital, his story has spread fast by word of mouth. Interestingly, a senior functionary of the RSS who once actively campaigned for L.K. Advani’s removal after his Jinnah statement in Pakistan seems most anxious to see the man he calls the party’s Bhishmapitamah reinstalled so that there can be a cleansing operation in the party office.

Sole channel for info

During the Kargil crisis, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) founder R.N. Kao counselled then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee that the Intelligence Bureau and RAW are the two swords of a prime minister and he should not allow any individual to usurp his right to interact with them directly. Kao was of course referring to Brajesh Mishra, who, when he took over as national security adviser, abolished the age-old tradition that the IB chief regularly interacts privately with the prime minister and the RAW chief can approach the prime minister directly whenever the need arises. Mishra did not just clip the wings of the prime minister by making himself the sole channel for intelligence information; in the bargain he also cut the ground from under the feet of the two agencies.

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