Vol. 6- Issue 6 - Sept 2012
COVER STORY
inside the congress renu mittal
Rahul as PM Now or Never!
Is
Rahul Gandhi reluctant to take up the post of Prime Minister of India
or are there bigger, and more wily players conniving to keep him out of
the prized chair?
Is it
time to ask the question – Is it now or never for Rahul Gandhi to take
over the Prime Ministership of India? And if its now, then who are the
people preventing Rahul from taking on this big role? Are there bigger
forces at work, forces that have ensured that Sonia Gandhi has been put
on the back-foot and has allowed Dr Manmohan Singh to continue as the
Prime Minister, knowing full well that the longer he continues, the
swifter would be the decline and downfall of the Congress Party.
Congressmen assert
that the first mistake was when P V Narasimha Rao was made the Prime
minister after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. If one analyses in
retrospect, it appears that Rao had a clear game plan to continue in
power, never mind what happened to the Congress Party. Through the
decisions he took and the path he trod – which ended with the demolition
of the Babri Masjid – the Rajiv Gandhi assassination probe was put on
the back-burner. Rao almost finished the Congress Party. So much so,
that it took eight long years for the Congress to find its feet and come
back to power in 2004.
Sources inform that
there are murmurs in the party today that whether Sonia Gandhi committed
a mistake by bringing in Dr Manmohan Singh as the man for the top job.
She perhaps thought that Singh being a non-political man would go when
Rahul was ready to take over. What she probably forgot or overlooked was
the fact that Dr Singh had always been an integral part of the power
machinery, whether as a bureaucrat, an economist or a politician. Sonia
Gandhi also overlooked the fact that Dr Singh got his political moorings
under the umbrella of Narasimha Rao. Manmohan Singh has just unfurled
the Indian Tricolour for the ninth time this year, clearly.......READMORE
Immediately
RAHUL GANDHI is working at it as if he were acting out a political thriller. Everyone is sure one day he must – and he will – but no one knows when! Congressmen are concerned that it may be too late by the time he does; the oppositionwallahs
are happy that the longer he dithers, the better for them. Others are
wondering whether he is being timid or canny, or whether he will seize
everything in one go or act out his destined role in stages. Old Delhi
hands are calling up parallels from the past to refresh each other’s
memories. How long did Nehru hesitate to take over the Congress and how
long did Indira Gandhi or Rajiv, for that matter? None of them rushed in
to sort out the mess in the Congress, the government or the country
just like that. They all bided their time, waiting in the wings, until
they found the moment opportune or when they were left with no option
but to seize what in their times everybody believed was rightfully
theirs. Each one of them faced a vastly different situation but one
thing was common: they cogitated, almost agonised themselves for long,
before taking the plunge into the larger volcanic political world of
their days.
If
It is
The
NOTHING
can be more instructive than an objective and systematic study of the
factors which led to the meteoric rise and fall of Team Anna in the
political firmament of this nation. There was a time when people who
should have known better were carried away by the euphoria of the moment
and seriously compared Anna Hazare with Mahatma Gandhi.
MOST
investors are baffled at the continued rally in the markets as concerns
relating to the economy do not seem to be receding. So, the question
that is uppermost in the minds of everyone is, why are the markets
rallying, especially when the economy is floundering? The explanation
put forth by some for this continued rally is that the downturn in the
economy appears to be bottoming out, there is the Chidambaram effect
that comes with high expectations of reforms and the expected release of
liquidity by the European central banks, which are better known as QE3
(quantitative easing round 3). However, these explanations may not hold
much water, if one looks at the fiscal mess that the economy is in, the
current political scenario, and the failure of QE1 and QE2 to herald a
bull run. 
If
the sequence of violent events in Assam’s Kokrajhar district is traced,
it appears that there is a gross administrative failure. Under Section
130 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc) 1973, the District
Magistrate is empowered to call in the Military to disperse suspected
violence creators. Bipul Saikia, Executive District Magistrate, smelled
that there may be violence and so requested the Area Brigadier to send
in some forces. The Brigadier thought otherwise; he could not sense the
urgency of the official in the field. Instead of sending the forces, he
informed the Divisional Commander, who informed the Eastern Command who
informed the Chief of Army Staff. As per the law, the Brigadier had to
comply but it is a mystery why the
Sunil
Arora, a 1980 batch IAS officer from the Rajasthan cadre, is the talk
of the town in Raisina Hills these days. If the events of last month are
monitored, it appears that he has more enemies than friends. The
Appointments Committee of the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh had approved Arora’s name as Development Commissioner (Handlooms)
under the Ministry of Textiles. Officials and politicians who are the
helm of affairs could not digest this and were even surprised about how
his name had been proposed for the coveted post. If insiders are to be
believed, it was Commerce Minister Anand Sharma who consented to have
him as Development Commissioner, Handlooms. Not surprisingly, as Anand
Sharma is a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan. But the following week
itself, the ACC cancelled the transfer order. One reason may be that
Sunil Arora was close to former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat
and served as Secretary under Vasundhra Raje Scindia when she was Chief
Minister, Rajasthan. Arora comes from a family of bureaucrats, many of
whom are in high ranking positions in Haryana and at the Centre.
Leighton
Welspun Contractors, a private sector Indo-Australian joint venture,
has been 
WEST
BENGAL Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was once a close friend and ally
of Congress leader Priya Ranjan Das Munshi. Both were youth activists in
the Congress and were known to be close. Today Mamata is the head of
her own political party, the Trinamool Congress, while the dynamic Priya
Ranjan Das Munshi is in Apollo Hospital in a coma for the last many
years after he suffered a major heart attack. He was the Union minister
for I&B. His wife Deepa Das Munshi contested as an MP from Priya’s
Lok Sabha seat and won the election. She is known to be a strong critic
of Mamata Banerjee and Mamata is known to dislike Deepa. But the
situation took an interesting turn recently when two of Mamata’s close
lieutenants went to Apollo Hospital and visited Priya Ranjan Das Munshi.
They were Sudeep Bandopadhyaya, the Minister of State for Health, and
Kunal Ghosh, a journalist and Rajya Sabha MP from Mamata’s party. Sudeep
sought details of how much money has been spent on Das Munshi’s
treatment and said he should be taken home since the hospital....
THE
tough talking Himachal Pradesh leader Virbhadra Singh almost quit the
Congress and joined the NCP but as word leaked out that he had met
Sharad Pawar, a nervous Sonia Gandhi immediately sat up and asked her
political secretary Ahmed Patel to meet Virbhadra and ensure he did not
leave. Virbhadra, as the tallest Congress leader in Himachal, naturally
wanted to be made PCC President simply because he wanted a lion’s share
in the distribution of tickets. He had been kept out of the screening
committee for Himachal Pradesh and if he had no say in the selection of
candidates, he could not have forcefully put in his bid to become the
chief minister. After two meetings with Sonia Gandhi, A K Antony was
asked to meet the senior leader and assure him that his demand was being
met and that PCC President Thakur Kaul Singh was being asked to put in
his papers. Even after that, the Congress leadership did not want to
announce his name alone and finally it was coupled with that of the new
UP PCC President. Just a few days before this, Virbhadra’s bête noire
Anand Sharma was overheard telling people that Virbhadra’s heydays were
over and there was no question.... 
IF
one were to ask who is the most well networked MP in Parliament, it
would be difficult to answer. But one name does come to mind, that of
Javed Akhtar, lyricist and scriptwriter who was nominated by the UPA to
the Rajya Sabha. His wife, actress Shabana Azmi, was a Rajya Sabha MP
earlier courtesy the Left parties. Javed Akhtar managed his nomination
courtesy Sonia Gandhi when he read out his poems on Indira Gandhi’s
martyrdom day and then again in the Central Hall of Parliament. At the
same time, he is known to be extremely close to BJP leader and former
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The buzz is that he is also close
to RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat. Given his relations with parties of all
hues, it is no wonder that he managed to get support for the Copyright
Bill and when it finally came through after a two-year struggle, he has
now organised a concert in the Parliament auditorium to say thank you.
Shabana will play the master of ceremonies for the concert, which is
expected to see the presence of top dignitaries like the PM, the
Congress president, Leaders of the Opposition and top Ministers.....