Big B’s toothache
The 10th Vishwa Hindi Sammelan, held in Bhopal recently, was organised jointly by the ministry of external affairs and the Madhya Pradesh government. However, the publicity material of the conference did not feature either chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan or external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, the hosts. The focus was on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who inaugurated the conference. Many of the big names of the Hindi literary world, including Sahitya Akademi Award winner Rajesh Joshi, Padma Shri Gyan Chaturvedi, Padma Shri Giriraj Kishore and Sahitya Akademi Award winner Ashok Vajpeyi, were not invited, although they were present at the 2012 conference held in Mauritius. Their omission was presumably because they had been close to the UPA government. MoS, external affairs, VK Singh made matters worse by suggesting that some who had attended the 2012 conference were not invited because they came only for food and drinks. Omitting known names in Hindi literature led to an outcry and several persons stayed away from the function, including Amitabh Bachchan. He said he had a toothache.
A Parsi welcome
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s record as chief minister in dealing with the minorities in Gujarat has often been criticised. The exception was Modi’s relationship with the tiny Parsi community of a few thousand. Modi as CM had visited Udvada, the Mecca of the Parsis, where the holy Iranshah fire, consecrated when the Parsis first landed in India some 1,300 year ago, is preserved . It was thanks to Modi that Udvada was declared a national heritage site. One of the high priests at the Iranshah fire temple had then predicted that Modi would one day return to Udvada as prime minister. The Parsis have organised an important function on December 27 and have invited Modi and HRD minister Smriti Irani, who is married to a Parsi.
PMO power centre
The ministry of personnel has advertised for posts of 20 personal assistants (PAs), seeking those well-versed in English, for the PMO. The services of the PAs are required for five years. This further indicates the growing concentration of power in the PMO, which is emerging as a mini secretariat. The unprecedented number of administrative assistants is required to oversee the functioning of all ministries and departments. A recent directive to ministers stated that approval from the PMO was necessary before moving a Cabinet note on a proposal. Until now, Cabinet ministers informally discussed with the PM the proposals they planned to place before the Cabinet. To house its expanding staff, the PMO has appropriated a large portion of space vacated by the external affairs ministry, which has shifted some of its staff to its new Jawahar Bhawan office on Janpath.
Democracy diluted
The Youth Congress (YC) was the first guinea pig for Rahul Gandhi’s plan of “democratising” the party. Some years back, elections were held for all posts in the YC, from the block to Assembly and parliamentary level. The Foundation for Advanced Management of Elections was hired for the exercise and to ensure that the poll rules were not violated. After the long-drawn-out and somewhat costly procedure was over, there were complaints that money power had swayed the outcome, since those who could pay for more membership enrolments won, and many of them, incidentally, were from prominent Congress families. Despite such criticism, Rahul has decided to repeat the formula in fresh elections to the YC, though with a few non-democratic touches. Last December, YC president Amrinder Singh Raja Brar was appointed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. He was not elected. In some states, the state Congress president has been given the right to nominate half the office-bearers.
Master of the game
Amit Shah is terse with journalists who criticise his handling of the party. His favourite retort is: “You run your newspaper, I will look after my party”. However, Shah is fully conscious that if the BJP gets a poor response in the Bihar Assembly elections, it will not only be a major setback for the party but his own position also will be in jeopardy. Shah has been working overtime to ensure a victory in the state. He wasn’t surprised that Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sharad Pawar did not back the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad alliance. Similarly, he reckoned much before it was announced that Asaduddin Owaisi would contest some seats in Bihar, thus splitting the Muslim vote. Disgruntled members of the secular front claim Shah had backchannel discussions with these political parties.