The inference that can be drawn from recent media reporting on a subject that appeared too sensitive to touch — cloak and dagger business at the heart of the government within weeks of its formation — is that Union home minister Rajnath Singh was in no mood to take things lying down as his superior, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, looked ready to bore into him.
On Wednesday, the home minister was the first to move, making references to circulating rumours about alleged misdemeanours about his son that cast both father and son in poor light. Mr Singh said if any part of this was proved right, he would retire from public life. He had earlier met the PM as well as BJP chief Amit Shah.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which under Mr Modi has acquired a spectacular reputation for saying little even when much has been expected from it, rushed with a public statement denouncing rumours and saying media reports to that effect were outright false and intended to show the government in poor light. A statement from the BJP president covering the same ground, and praising Mr Singh, also materialised. These are extraordinary developments at the highest levels of the country’s first full-fledged saffron government.
The home minister is evidently angry. He can’t know if the statements of the PMO and the BJP chief are not merely meant to soothe his nerves and to get him off attack mode, and that efforts to needle and harass him won’t be reactivated at a later date.
Mr Singh has been BJP chief himself, besides chief minister of UP and a Union Cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government. Perhaps he regards himself as a co-equal of Mr Modi, if not in constitutional terms then at the level of the ruling party. His status has been sought to be downgraded somewhat by the impression that Arun Jaitley, who holds two prime Cabinet portfolios, is the real number two in the Modi regime, not Mr Singh, whose position might at best be de jure since the PM doesn’t really care for him.
So, there are many dissatisfactions. Added to that is the fact that his son, against whom rumours — evidently floated by senior-level BJP elements themselves — of fixing Delhi police transfers and postings began to surface, was denied an Assembly ticket in UP (when sons of others have not been left out). The question is: does the home minister feel he is under siege?
We should seek more evidence before we come to a determination. But it is not looking good. Unlike other ministers, Mr Singh has made known he won’t stand for being secretly scrutinised or cut to size by the PM.
