Column

It’s not politics this time. It’s economics, stupid! The fight over Telangana is actually a battle for Hyderabad whose streets are thought to be paved with gold. Why else would a Member of Parliament from Vijaywada along the coast take the extreme step of quitting his Lok Sabha seat and proceeding on a hunger strike to protest the formation of a separate Telangana state?

According to his fellow parliamentarians, the MP, L Rajagopal, has everything to lose if Telangana bags Hyderabad in the proposed division. His vast commercial interests in this boom city include a mega township called Lanco Hills, which has an investment outlay of some Rs 3,600 crore, mostly from NRI Andhras based in the US.

His colleagues say that Rajagopal’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing ever since Chidambaram’s midnight announcement of the creation of Telangana, with worried investors phoning in to ask what’s going to become of the money they’ve put into his mini city in Hyderabad. The global meltdown had caused a slump in any case and with Telangana looming large on the horizon, NRIs are threatening to pull out completely. No wonder Rajagopal is a worried man!

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Outgoing BJP president Rajnath Singh emerged a loser in the compromise succession plan hammered out between LK Advani and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. While Advani retains his grip over the parliamentary party and Bhagwat has got his nominee, Nitin Gadkari, as president, Rajnath has been left emptyhanded. All those years of bowing and scraping to the Sangh seem to have got him nowhere. But Rajnath hasn’t given up.

He is now lobbying to become chairman of the all powerful parliamentary board, which is the apex decision-making body. It’s an audacious gambit because under the party constitution, the president automatically becomes the board chairman. But Rajnath’s argument is that an exception was made for Advani who held the post instead of him. So why can’t the constitution be amended and the fishes and loaves of office distributed evenly? It looks like the BJP’s internal problems are far from over.

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Rural development minister CP Joshi had to pull strings ultimately to win the hotly contested election for president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association. With chief minister Ashok Gehlot, who is Joshi’s rival in state politics, secretly backing Shivcharan Mali, the Union minister went knocking on the doors of 10 Janpath for help. It came readily (Joshi is said to be a great favourite of Rahul Gandhi) and a directive went from Delhi. In a last-minute flurry, a compromise was effected. Mali withdrew from the contest and was duly appointed president of the Rajasthan Sports Council with a minister of state rank. And Joshi heads the RCA. Gehlot is maintaining a discreet silence but his detractors in Delhi believe that he will have to watch his step in future.

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Tailpiece

Delhi mayor Kanwar Sain has been fuming ever since he saw newspaper pictures of his Chennai counterpart M Subramaniam cycling away in Copenhagen to give a green push to the ongoing climate meet. Sain was supposed to have gone to the Danish capital too but at the last moment, the environment ministry cancelled his trip and denied him a place in the international limelight. Sain is so upset that he’s dashed off a letter to the PM complaining about political bias. Sain is a BJP member while Subramaniam is from the DMK.