Small wonders

The winter session of Parliament is over, and AR Antulay is still the minority affairs minister. Of course, we know why: he climbed down from his stand that there was more to Hemant Karkare’s killing than terrorism. But by now, we also know that Antulay had no desire to retract his comment. (Perhaps he is secretly happy that home minister P Chidambaram could not read out the clarificatory statement in the uproarious Lok Sabha.) So who did the bridging act? Insiders claim it was Ahmad Patel, political secretary to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi. Patel not only played peace-maker between a miffed PM and Antulay, but also convinced Madam that removing Antulay would not go down well with the party’s minority vote bank. And eventually, he won over the most-offended trio of Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Chidambaram by making Antulay give his nod to the home minister’s statement. If you are wondering whether Antulay’s resignation letter was torn up ceremonially, here’s the last piece of scoop. There was no quit letter. Only a letter explaining his stand to the PM, to whom Antulay is also known to have said he’d rather quit than take back his words.

Lady’s seat

With the Antulay sticky area scrubbed and cleaned to the best of their ability, Congress leaders are trying to switch to election gear. And what could be a better opening gambit than getting Priyanka Gandhi into the poll fray? The party unit in Andhra Pradesh is leaving no stone unturned to field the Gandhi daughter from the Medak Lok Sabha seat. The worries are understandable, with communists allying with the TDP, and filmstars floating their own political outfits. If the Andhra Congress manages to rope in Priyanka, then Medak would be the ideal seat for her. For this was the seat that had sent Indira Gandhi to the Lok Sabha in 1980, when she had trounced the Janata Dal.

Proactive family

If sis is in the news, can the brother be far behind? Rahul Gandhi has been trying to get his party a level playing field with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. As if such a thing is possible in Indian politics! He has made it clear that the Congress will settle for no less than 25 seats in UP, what with the newfound confidence after winning Delhi, Mizoram and Rajasthan. But the Samajwadis are loath to give up ‘sitting seats’. The tug-of-war goes on, but what might emerge out of it could be nothing more significant than Raj Babbar as the consensus candidate from Fatehpur Sikri.

A healing touch

Hope floats. On birthdays, most notably. It didn’t escape anyone’s eyes that Atal Bihari Vajpayee looked in better health than he has in a long time, when he came out to be greeted by well-wishers on his 85th birthday. Supporters insist that the stem-cell therapy initiated by the Delhi-based doctor, Geeta Shroff, has worked wonders for the ailing leader, as it did to former Chhattisgarh CM, Ajit Jogi, and BJP’s Sunderlal Patwa. So, will Vajpayee bat again for his party? Wonder what LK Advani is thinking?

Three for joy

The holiday season calls for mending fences and being good to one another. And that is how AK Walia, Haroon Yusuf and Mangat Ram Singhal have retained their berths in the Sheila Dikshit cabinet in Delhi. Not that Dikshit was in a particularly holiday-season mood. She wanted to banish all three from her cabinet — make Walia the speaker, and replace the other two with candidates more to her liking. But the trio decided to seek an audience with Madam at 10 Janpath. There they told her that if Dikshit has fought anti-incumbency successfully, so have they, winning their third consecutive poll. And so, if Dikshit gets as prize a third term as CM, then they should get a third term as ministers too. The voters certainly didn’t think they were non-performers, so Dikshit can’t either. Sound logic, decided Madam. And so, they stayed on to wish another merry Christmas to the CM.

Wishes...from a distance

Talking of Christmas, why is it that Sonia Gandhi’s name did not feature in the list of leaders wishing the nation on Christmas via the national radio and television channels? Along with the president, vice-president and prime minister, Sonia Gandhi has been wishing her countrymen happy Eid or Diwali of Guru Nanak’s birthday for some time now. Some have detected in this significant omission the Congress president’s fear of the sangh parivar, ever since it started questioning her origins. But can one blame her for not wanting to be at the receiving end of an attack that is nasty, brutish...and long?

The long and the short of it

How can something be long and short at the same time? But that is exactly what this session of Parliament will go down as — the longest and briefest session in India’s parliamentary history. Here’s how. It was the longest because the monsoon session (actually, a two-day special session to pass the trust vote) extended into the winter; and briefest because, the number of days notwithstanding, it saw fewer sittings than any others before. If the government had its way, then the monsoon-winter session would extend into the budget session before polls were announced. But Speaker Somnath Chatterjee played the spoiler. He used his baritone to stunning effect and refused to be part of such a mockery of parliamentary practice. Whether that left ruling-party MPs quaking in their boots is unknown, but suffice to say that the government agreed to adjourn the present session sine die, and convene a brand-new one to signal the end of the 14th Lok Sabha.