Sex, letter & videotape

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.

Under Mishra’s successor M.K. Narayanan, the IB chief continues to report to the NSA, not the prime minister. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems conscious that he is missing out on getting a total picture by relying on only one source. At a function to award medals to RAW officers, Singh urged senior intelligence officers to call on him whenever they felt the need to so. But with a suspicious Narayanan likely to be offended if the prime minister is approached directly, so far no intelligence chief has taken up the offer.

Keeper of the flame

Sonia Gandhi has selected the popular, low-profile journalist Suman Dubey, who is a close family friend, to take over as secretary of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund in place of Natwar Singh, who was secretary for the last 17 years. Singh stopped attending meetings of the trust after the Volcker scandal broke, but he continues to be a lifetime trustee. JNMF has the copyrights for all Nehru’s books. It selects writings for editing and publishing and also organises the Nehru Memorial lecture.

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