Blue-eyed boys

...by the way

 

Blue-eyed boys

 

CBI chief Ranjit Sinha was handpicked by the UPA for the top job to head the country’s premier investigative agency. But Congress bosses are unhappy at the manner in which he has been taking decisions which have politically hurt the Congress Party. Whether it be the raids on M Karunanidhi’s son Stalin, which led to the latter persuading his father to withdraw support to the Congress government, or in putting the Government in the dock over the Law Minister vetting the CBI statement on coalgate. What the Congress bosses obviously did not know when they handpicked him for the job was his close association with senior BJP kayasth leaders Yashwant Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad or Shatrughan Sinha, all of whom are members of the Chitragupta Samaj. As far as Law Minister Ashwini Kumar is concerned, the buzz is that there was an attempt to protect the Prime Minister himself since the then Joint Secretary in the PMO, who was in charge of coal, was Shatrughan Singh, who was also an important bureaucrat during the Atal Behari Vajpayee regime. So much so that Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao had sent him to Ayodhya on a secret mission in the pre-Babri Masjid demolition days. And obviously he was retained in the PMO, with Vajpayee putting in a good word with Dr Manmohan Singh. The PMO is clear that there is no question of sacking their blue-eyed boy Ashwini Kumar though the majority of the Congress and the Government have a different view. It is now for the Congress Party to take a call. g