PMO closed during shraddh?

A meeting of Congress functionaries and leaders was held last week to brainstorm about organising a function as part of the party’s year-long plan to mark Jawaharlal Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary on November 14. Several suggestions were put forth by the participants while they raised concerns over the attempts being made by the RSS and the BJP to dilute Nehruvian values. While most proposals centred around launching an aggressive counter-offensive, former external affairs minister Salman Khurshid has his own ideas about keeping the Nehru legacy alive.

After the BJP government’s decision to discontinue stamps in the name of former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, Mr Khurshid decided to issue his own stamps to thumb his nose at the NDA. Consequently, he instructed the computer-savvy youngsters working in his office to design special stamps in the name of the two former Congress PMs. Mr Khurshid has finally approved one of the designs they worked on, but after making this effort he does not know how to proceed further. He had thought he would distribute them to his friends and colleagues, but soon realised that tehy have stopped using the postal service. All geared up for a fight, but where’s the battle?

Bureaucrats in New Delhi were a little surprised when the Centre recently deviated from the usual practice of appointing new secretaries when five of them retired on September 30. Instead, the government decided to give temporary charge of these ministries and departments to their colleagues. Several reasons are being cited for this.

While some say Prime Minister Modi does not wish to take any decision in a hurry and that he would prefer to wait and pick efficient bureaucrats of his choice, others maintain that he put off the appointments because of the inauspicious shraddh period which is expected to end on October 12.  It is being whispered that the Prime Minister has not signed any important file during this period. Of course there are some files which cannot wait for the auspicious Navratri period to kick in, but Mr Modi, it is learnt, has made an effort to avoid clearing files, especially those dealing with appointments.

The three bureaucratic positions critical to any dialogue between India and Pakistan are that of the foreign secretary, Indian high commissioner in Islamabad and joint secretary incharge of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. As a result, the names of its ambassadors,  announced recently by the ministry of external affairs, raised many eyebrows. The appointment of Gautam Bambawale as high commissioner to Pakistan was surprising as he has never served there. Not just that, foreign secretary S. Jaishankar and Rudrendra Tandon who was joint secretary incharge when the new appointments were announced, have also never done a stint in Pakistan. But the ministry fixed this anomaly last week when Gopal Baglay replaced Mr Tandon. Having served as deputy high commissioner in Islamabad, Mr Baglay is  familiar with Indo-Pak relationship.

Although a newcomer to Delhi politics, Union minister of state for culture Mahesh Sharma has managed to give tough competition to BJP MPs Yogi Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj, when it comes to making provocative statements. A year after he took charge, Mr Sharma has been making headlines with his controversial interviews in which, while talking about the renaming of Aurangzeb Road to A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Road, he said that the road  was renamed as the former President was a nationalist despite being a Muslim. More recently, Mr Sharma made news for referring to the Dadri lynching as an “accident”. The general view is that as a debutant Union minister, Mr Sharma does not know how to conduct himself.

But Delhi’s grapevine says that  Mr Sharma is well aware of what he is doing. All his statements, it is said, are aimed at pleasing RSS bosses who are believed to have issued instructions that since the BJP has a majority government in Delhi, no effort should be spared in propagating Hindutva ideology. Moreover, Mr Sharma is also positioning himself as a future contender for the post of UP chief minister as he believes that the party will pick a brahmin given its strong base among the upper castes.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist