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ShareThere's more talk in BJP circles about those not invited to next week's chintan baithak in Shimla than about those who are going. Two of the most outspoken critics of the party's dismal election performance, Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, have been kept out. It's odd, considering the three-day meet was called to analyse the reasons for the BJP's defeat in the recent Lok Sabha polls and map out future strategies. The party doesn't seem to be in any mood for honest introspection, however. After hectic consultations, it was decided to knock the first item off the agenda and concentrate on the second. No fire and brimstone please. And definitely no talk of leadership change. In other words, a baithak without chintan. The list of delegates was prepared accordingly and the names of Sinha and Shourie omitted.
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The Congress and the CPI(M) may have once locked horns over Somnath Chatterjee but now they're both straining to keep him in the style to which he became accustomed as Lok Sabha Speaker. In Delhi, Sonia Gandhi personally intervened to get him a sarkari bungalow when he was left homeless after handing over the Speaker's sprawling official residence to successor Meera Kumar. In Kolkata, his benefactors were Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and assembly speaker Abdul Haleem who pleaded with governor Gopal Gandhi to allow Chatterjee to retain his government cottage in the extensive grounds of Raj Bhavan. (The colonial bungalow was allotted to Chatterjee as Speaker for use during his frequent visits to Kolkata.) Not bad for a man who became a bone of contention between the Congress and the CPI(M) when the latter withdrew support to the UPA government over the Indo-US nuclear deal. How many can boast of government benefactions from opposite sides of the political divide! The icing on the cake will be a presidential nomination to the Rajya Sabha for one of the eight seats that have fallen vacant in the category reserved for eminent persons from different walks of life. The Congress is believed to be toying with the idea of rewarding Chatterjee for sticking by them when comrade Prakash Karat was spitting fire.
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While Sonia Gandhi was busy tying raakhis on the wrists of young children, Mamata Banerjee chose to make a fraternal gesture to Pranab Mukherjee. She turned up at his house on Raksha Bandhan with a trayful of raakhis and boxes of sandesh straight from Kolkata. To everyone's surprise, she not only tied a raakhi on Mukherjee's wrist, she did the same for his entire staff, including the peon, Hira Lal, who mans the door. This display of love and affection didn't stop Mamata from shouting hysterically at Mukherjee a couple of days later over the proposed Land Acquisition Act. She wanted the government to hold back the bill and revise it while Mukherjee wanted to introduce it in the just concluded session of Parliament. Ultimately, Mamata got her way. She appealed to Mukherjee's boss, Sonia Gandhi, and won her point.
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Tailpiece
Tongues are wagging in the Congress about Manmohan Singh's absence the day the Lok Sabha passed the 2009-10 budget. Sonia Gandhi was present but this was probably the first time that the prime minister of the country was missing. Did the party's very public disapproval of the Sharm-el-Sheikh blunder have anything to do with the PM's unusual behaviour?
