For somebody who often boasted about how he kept tabs on his party colleagues, the story about the alleged discovery of listening devices at road transport minister Nitin Gadkari’s residence must have been particularly galling for him. Over two years ago, when Mr Gadkari was flying high as Bharatiya Janata Party president, he admitted in private conversations that he had engaged agencies to mount surveillance on key BJP leaders. Mr Gadkari had resorted to these measures because he was well aware that many party leaders, upset about his elevation as BJP president, were leaking material against him to the media. Mr Gadkari’s favourite story was about how he embarrassed a senior BJP leader by confronting him with the details of his phone calls with media persons, which were coincidentally followed by unflattering stories about him in the press.
But Mr Gadkari underestimated the BJP’s Delhi gang which ultimately succeeded in dethroning him. Not only did he have to step down as BJP president, but his ambition of being projected as his party’s prime ministerial candidate was also successfully thwarted. And now he’s bugged, literally. The circle of politics continues.
Republican Party of India (RPI) chief Ramdas Athawale is thrilled that controversial Bollywood actor Rakhi Sawant has joined his party as her entry has given him so much publicity that he would never have got on his own. He is, therefore, scouting around for more Bollywood actors to enlist as his party members. While no well-known actor has shown any interest in Mr Athawale’s proposals, he recently said that he had approached yesteryear filmstar Salma Agha to join his party. It is not known if a formal invite was actually sent out to the Karachi-born actor, but the RPI chief developed cold feet after he learnt that Salma Agha is from Pakistan. Mr Athawale admitted he is nervous about how his alliance partner Shiv Sena would react to the new entrant to his party in view of its antipathy to Pakistan.
Mr Athawale, a prominent dalit leader from Maharashtra, joined the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance a year ago. And he does not want to upset his new partners. Maharashtra Assembly elections are due in another two months and Mr Athawale would naturally like to extract his fair share of seats from his allies. But his cageyness also speaks volumes of the fear of Shiv Sena.
All-India Congress Committee general secretary and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh has acquired a reputation of being outspoken and irreverent when it comes to his political rivals. But he can be equally unsparing about himself . Unlike most other politicians, Mr Singh does not take himself too seriously and is able to laugh at himself. This came through in his recent conversation with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar who asked the Congress leader about his recent activities. “I am busy destroying my political roots,” Mr Singh replied with a straight face. “I might as well do so myself before somebody else undermines me,” he stated, adding for good measure, “I want to become a rootless wonder, they fare very well.” Mr Singh was obviously referring to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s confidants like Madhusudan Mistry and Mohan Prakash, who are under fire from within the Congress for being entrusted with the crucial task of selection of
candidates and ticket distribution in the last Lok Sabha polls even though their own electoral record has, at best, been dismal. Like them, Mr Singh was once a member of what is often referred to as Rahul’s Team but they fell out.
Former external affairs minister K. Natwar Singh’s interviews about his forthcoming memoir, One Life Is Not Enough: An Autobiography, may have created a stir in the Capital’s political circles, but his publishers, Rupa Publications, were apparently not particularly happy with their star author’s performance, especially in the first interview given to Karan Thapar. Clearly aiming to boost the sales of their book, slated for a formal launch onAugust 7, the publishers were expecting Mr Singh to come out with far more explosive revelations. They were particularly keen for the former Congress leader to disclose all those nuggets about the
Nehru-Gandhi family which could not be included in the book for one reason or the other. They were hoping that Mr Singh had stayed focused on Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
But Mr Singh digressed, often.
Despite this, Mr Singh had obviously revealed enough to elicit a sharp reaction from the otherwise taciturn Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. We must now wait for other former Congressmen to add their juicy addendums to the stories Mr Singh has revived about the Gandhi parivaar.
The writer is a Delhi-based journalist
