June 8, 1998
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Delhi: Time was when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and CPI (M) General Secretary H.S. Surjeet were thick as thieves. During the United Front's 18-month reign, whenever Naidu visited Delhi, his first port of call used to be Surjeet's Teen Murti Lane residence. However, the tdp chief's decision to flirt with the BJP led to an acrimonious split between the two and the friends-turned-foes have neither met nor spoken to each other for the past two months. While Naidu has so far refrained from criticising his erstwhile friend in public, Surjeet has not spared Naidu for "supping with the enemy". Last week, the two bumped into each other at the VIP lounge of Delhi's Palam airport. Spotting Surjeet all by himself, Naidu walked up to him and greeted him, but the veteran communist, still upset at the "betrayal", merely acknowledged the gesture. Unperturbed, Naidu took his senior colleague in a bear hug, saying, "I had my compulsions, you had yours. But surely, we can be friends?" Surjeet's steely look, however, suggested otherwise. Chandigarh: It was not the kind of vacation that Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal had anticipated. On May 21, the day he landed in Shimla to escape the scorching heat of Chandigarh, bad news followed him. Before Bansi Lal could settle down to unwind in the sylvan hills came an unsettling call from a senior official of Hisar seeking his permission to arrest his daughter Sumitra who had allegedly assaulted two local officials, including the city magistrate. Sumitra apparently lost her cool and had slapped the city magistrate after she was refused permission to hold her daughter's birthday party in the state government guesthouse. Given the resentment in the Hisar administration following the incident, Bansi Lal had little option but to give the nod for the arrest of his daughter, who was bailed out two days later. While Bansi Lal's supporters are touting the episode as an "example of his fairness", the fact remains that he couldn't have afforded inaction in the run-up to the June 3 Adampur assembly by-election. Whether the incident helps Bansi Lal's dwindling popularity or not, it did play spoilsport with his annual holiday in the hills. Delhi: Perhaps it was a short break from the heat he had generated by asking Pakistan to roll back its proxy war in Kashmir. While the debate on his strident stand was still on, Home Minister L.K. Advani pushed off to an Indo-Tibetan Border Police out-post. Back in Delhi, it was the same routine: security issues were taking up all his time. At his residence too, he was surrounded by National Security Guards personnel. That's when Advani took the impromptu decision to give the security a slip. And guess where the home minister decided to go with wife Kamla? To see Titanic. Advani had read and heard so much about the film, that he didn't want to miss it either. But soon it was back to North Block, to steer quite another kind of ship. Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh had assigned the task of introducing a new work culture in the administration to Yogendra Narain, the state chief secretary. Narain has now submitted an action plan to his boss. And topping the list is the "right to information" to make the state machinery transparent and accountable to the public. Kalyan, however, is in a dilemma over the implementation of the action plan, especially the "right to information". The chief minister has been mulling over at least half a dozen inquiry reports, and once they are made public, it may trigger a fresh round of mud-slinging within the coalition Government. The chief minister has now put the plan on the backburner, causing considerable embarrassment to its author. Hyderabad: For the newly appointed Andhra Pradesh Congress President Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, it was hardly an auspicious beginning. The gruesome killing last week of his father Y.S. Raja Reddy, a former sarpanch of their native Pulivendula village in Cuddapah district, and the subsequent violence in which property worth almost Rs 2 crore was destroyed, is likely to intensify faction politics and vengeful killings in the Rayalaseema region. "The killers did it with the backing of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu who knew that his TDP had no future in Cuddapah as long as Raja Reddy was alive," argues Congress MLA G.M.K. Naidu, demanding a CBI probe. To be sure, Raja Reddy had an unedifying police record and few dared to stand up to his authoritarian ways. A week before he died, Raja Reddy was arrested for storming a police station to free a supporter detained there. The new Congress chief is known to be mercurial, but given his task of consolidating his party's position in the state -- besides the family base in Cuddapah -- the younger Reddy will have his hands full in the coming months. Mumbai: If you can't provide them potable drinking water, give them mineral water. That seems to be the motto of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which last week decided to sell bottled water to Mumbaiites. "We must come up with new ideas to solve old problems," says deputy mayor Gopal Shetty of the BJP. According to him, the BMC supplies nearly 15 lakh litres of water a day to private mineral water bottling plants for as little as Rs 2.2 a litre. Purified and bottled, it is sold for Rs 10 to Rs 12. "We can do the same thing and let the BMC earn some money," says Shetty. He may have convinced the 11-member council of the wisdom of this decision; however, millions of Mumbaiites -- who don't get water sometimes for three days at a stretch -- are still to buy the argument. Chandigarh: For the first time, the Sikh clergy may have to rely upon some professional lensmen to enable them to pronounce an edict in a religious row. The controversy over SGPC President G.S. Tohra's alleged violation of a 1978 edict of the Akal Takht calling on the Sikhs to boycott the Nirankaris has now boiled down to a photograph showing the Akali leader in the company of leaders of the "ostracised" sect. On May 23, senior Congress leader and long-time Tohra-baiter Captain Amarinder Singh sprang a surprise by submitting to the clergy a photograph which he claimed was "conclusive evidence" of the Tohra-Nirankari meeting during the February Lok Sabha elections. Instead, the photograph has created another controversy with Tohra's supporters alleging it was a fake, fabricated by superimposing two pictures. But for Akali MP Prem Singh Chandumajra, who threatened to slap a defamation case against Amarinder, the protests were muted, leading the SGPC chief to drop hints recently that the campaign against him was part of a conspiracy within the Akali Dal. With by-elections to the Tarn Taran Lok Sabha constituency scheduled for June 3, Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal moved quickly to dispel such impressions by announcing that his party would sue Amarinder for defaming the SGPC chief. Bangalore: More than a decade ago, when Amitabh Bachchan got injured during the shooting of a Hindi film, hundreds of his followers lined up outside the hospital to donate blood and pray for his recovery. The scene outside Bangalore's Mallya Hospital, where popular Kannada actress Nivedita Jain, 18, is battling for her life, is reminiscent of those days. Nivedita was hospitalised after she fell from the terrace of her 35 ft high two-storeyed house on the night of May 17. While her family members maintain that the star slipped and fell while practising the catwalk for a forthcoming Miss India contest, police officials are not ruling out a suicide attempt. Doctors say the chances of survival for Nivedita, now on ventilator support, are bleak. Nivedita catapulted to fame as a swimsuit-clad siren in Shivaranjini four years ago. However, eight films later, the young actress has not been able to bag any new assignments, making many wonder whether she would be remembered as a one-film wonder. Chennai: Many get-rich-quick artistes in Tamil Nadu have dabbled in sandalwood smuggling before branching out to more lucrative "trades". Some even join politics. Thus there was little surprise when reports appeared late last year about the alleged involvement of a ruling DMK MLA Shanmugham in sandalwood smuggling from the Jawad Hills in Tirupattur. When Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi came out in the open to deny the involvement of his party MLA in the nefarious trade, there were more leaks in local newspapers that suggested otherwise. Although the state crime branch police has given a clean chit to the MLA, the high court ordered a CBI inquiry into the matter following a public interest petition. The CBI conducted an inquiry on May 12 in which a detailed statement was obtained from a forest guard, Vijayan, who was part of the police raid party that seized 810 kg of sandalwood and a Maruti van on January 31 last year. Vijayan died the day he gave the statement to the CBI. According to the chief minister, Vijayan was knocked down by a speeding lorry, but family members and the opposition AIADMK leaders believe that he was bumped off to prevent him from making any more disclosures or substantiating them in the court later. Clearly, more worms are likely to come out of the can in the days to come. Chennai: For long now, his detractors have been baying for his ouster on the ground that his Government turned a blind eye to terrorists. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has finally decided to prove them wrong. On May 26, he introduced a bill in the state Assembly which many feel is more draconian than the now-defunct Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). The Tamil Nadu Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, 1998, which will be in force for five years, is a follow-up to the state Government's stated determination to come down heavily on terrorism. Among the salient features of the bill is a clause that seeks to stop people from giving sanctuary to terrorists. The bill envisages a fine of Rs 10 lakh and life imprisonment to those harbouring terrorists. Similarly, possession of fire arms or explosives with these intentions will come under the purview of the Act. Punishment for these offences are death, life term, fines up to Rs 10 lakh and confiscation of the property of offenders. Ever since the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore in February and the massive haul of explosives from various parts of the state in recent times, the AIADMK and its allies, partners in the coalition at the Centre, have been putting pressure on the Vajpayee Government to dismiss the DMK regime. Karunanidhi has just given the Centre one more reason to not sack his Government for an unprecedented third time. |
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