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ShareP lanning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia's graph seems to have dipped southwards as new power equations emerge in UPA Mark 2. Known as Manmohan Singh's blue-eyed boy, Ahluwalia used to be all over the place.
Not any more. The first signal of his declining clout was the appointment of a cabinet committee to replace the committee on infrastructure through which the Planning Commission wielded near-total control of all infrastructure projects. With the cabinet committee becoming the nodal body for these projects, the Commission has been reduced to being a mere spectator.
The three Planning Commission officials who were members of the earlier committee were knocked off and Ahluwalia has been downgraded from full member to special invitee. Also, instead of the Planning Commission, the cabinet secretariat, which reports to the PMO, will service the new committee. Whispers in the corridors of powers suggest that Ahluwalia's wings are gradually being clipped as the PMO assumes more and more direct control of the levers of governance.
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Roads transport minister Kamal Nath was one of the first to fire a salvo at Ahluwalia's Planning Commission. The minister-in-a-hurry found himself swamped with complaints from stakeholders in the roads construction business about the Commission's bureaucratic stranglehold over the clearance process for new projects. They were particularly incensed about certain clauses of the Model Concession Agreement framed by the Planning body, which they said were a turn-off for private players. Since the Commission refused to entertain any project not governed by the MCA, hardly any new contracts were awarded over the past five years.
Poor T R Baalu! The unwanted DMK man who was the roads minister in the UPA government's first term was blamed for the slowdown in the sector. Now, it turns out the Planning Commission, not Baalu, may have been the real villain! A committee headed by former cabinet secretary B K Chaturvedi has since reworked the MCA and the power to clear projects has been taken away from the Planning Commission and given to the cabinet committee on infrastructure. Ok. So Nath has got Ahluwalia out of his hair. Now he has to deliver.
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Mamata Banerjee is in danger of going the Lalu way. After the RJD chief stomped all over the Congress in Bihar, Sonia Gandhi was forced to put aside her personal fondness for Lalu and allow the Congress to go it alone in the polls. Now it's Mamata's turn to receive similar treatment. When she tried to meet Sonia to demand that the Congress back her nominee in the recent mayoral elections in Siliguri, Mamata found the doors of 10 Janpath shut. This is probably the first time that Sonia has coldshouldered the Trinamool leader for whom she has always had a soft spot. Well, that's politics.
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Tailpiece
Despite being in a soup for posting embarrassing and outspoken tweets, Shashi Tharoor has no intention of closing his Twitter account. On the contrary, he told a group of journos at a lunch he hosted recently that his tweets are actually helping to expand the Congress party's base and influence. There are some 2.60 lakh Twitter account holders, he said, and all of them are getting acquainted with the Congress through his regular posts. In fact, he even boasted that many of them now want to join the party and have been asking him how to go about it. Incidentally, the lunch was arranged by the external affairs ministry at a five-star hotel. Perhaps the austerity bug hasn't bitten the foreign office yet.
