Political Gup-Shup: Fanning ambitions, new & old

The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress may be on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but they have one thing in common: Members in both the camps have a serious problem with the admission of “lateral entrants” and non-political elements in their respective parties. If there are murmurs in the  Congress about party vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s dependence on bureaucrat-turned-politician K. Raju and “outsiders” like Madhusudan Mistry and Mohan Prakash, BJP leaders who have come up the ranks also have the same complaint.

Narrating his problems with Bollywood actor and BJP’s Lok Sabha MP from Chandigarh Kirron Kher, a party leader said he was having a tough time meeting her or organising a workers’ meeting in her constituency. On one such occasion when he fixed a workers’ meeting in Chandigarh, he was informed by the actor’s staff that she would not be able to make it as it was her “hair styling and drying” day. Similarly, BJP old-timers are miffed with the large contingent of new MPs, especially from Uttar Pradesh, who benefited from the Modi wave in the 2014 election. Since most of them are political non-entities, the “true-blood” party members derisively maintain that they have made it to Parliament on a “Modi pass”.

Given his antipathy to Subramaniam Swamy and Navjot Singh Sidhu, it was not surprising that finance minister Arun Jaitley was not happy with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to nominate the two BJP leaders to the Rajya Sabha.
Mr Jaitley was presented with a fait accompli as he was in the United States when these nominations were announced. Mr Jaitley is learnt to have called up party president Amit Shah to complain about these nominations. Mr Jaitley reminded him how Mr Sidhu had sabotaged his campaign when he contested the last Lok Sabha election from Amritsar.

Mr Shah explained it was a political decision with an eye on next year’s Punjab Assembly elections. Mr Sidhu has been sulking for over two years now because Mr Jaitley was fielded from Amritsar in 2014 even though he had the first claim on the seat as he was the sitting MP. The BJP had to placate Mr Sidhu because he was threatening to leave the BJP and join the Aam Aadmi Party which was willing to project him as its chief ministerial candidate in next year’s Punjab Assembly election.

As for Dr Swamy, the maverick MP promises to be a handful. As Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha, Mr Jaitley will find it difficult to rein in Dr Swamy. With a little over a year to go for the election of the next President and vice-president, speculation about their successors has already started. Not just that, but aspirants have also started lobbying for these positions. Minister for minority affairs Najma Heptulla, who has been aspiring to occupy the vice-president’s kursi for over a decade, is said to be interested in the job. In fact, it is said she crossed over to the BJP from the Congress in 2004 because she was upset that the party failed to name her for the vice-president’s post.

The BJP did field her against current vice-president Hamid Ansari in 2007 although it was well known that the numbers were stacked against her. But now that the BJP is in power, Ms Heptulla has, once again, set her eyes on the post. For starters, she made it a point to ring up the new nominated members of Rajya Sabha, ostensibly to congratulate them. But the real purpose was to solicit their support for the vice-president’s election. She gave the game away when she followed up her congratulatory message by telling them: “The present Rajya Sabha chairman only gives you five minutes to make your speech… elect a better chairman next time.”  The vice-president doubles as the Rajya Sabha Chairman. Ms Heptulla believes she is eminently suited for the job as she was deputy chairperson of the Upper House for nearly 15 years.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi Lok Sabha MP A.P. Jitender Reddy, who is the chairman of the food management committee of Parliament, takes this job really seriously. He started by introducing new items like Hyderabadi biryani and qubani ka meetha on the menu, which endeared him to his colleagues. He is now working on introducing further changes in the canteen. In order to do so, he struck upon the novel idea of taking the members of the food committee, along with managers of the Parliament canteen, on a tour to different cities, including Mumbai and Bengaluru where the visitors checked out the canteens at Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Defence Research and Development Organisation.

Mr Reddy maintains that the purpose of these tours was to see how these canteens are run, with a special focus on hygiene and the presentation of food. According to him, most canteens have limited menus but they keep changing the items regularly. The food committee is in the process of writing its report and if its recommendations are accepted, the Parliament canteen may well soon sport a new look.