By Nora Chopra
No major reshuffle in Congress Party till Assembly elections
There will be no organizational reshuffle in the Congress till after the assembly polls. There are indications that the Congress leadership will wait for the results of the Assembly polls in the hope that the results of these states may not be as bad as predicted by the media and may boost the image of the party vice president Rahul Gandhi who is under attack for the worst ever defeat of the party in last Lok Sabha elections. The Congress leadership which does not believe in changing the party structure very frequently and has been criticised for its status quoist stand will make all the changes at one go. The delay in the reshuffle is also due to the intense power struggle between Sonia Gandhi camp and Rahul camp. It is to be seen who wins the battle. .Ajay Maken, the head of the AICC media department who too was under attack for his failure in boosting the image of the party and the image of Rahul Gandhi or countering the Modi propaganda need not worry as no action is likely to be taken against him in the reshuffle despite the growing demand to replace him in the media. Relaxed by these indicators, he has practically stopped coming to the communication department at 24 Akbar Road.
Fierce infighting among Congress spokespersons harms image
As the infighting and personal rivalries continue to mark the demoralized Congress Party, the credibility of the journalists covering the beat is at stake. Recently when Congress spokespersons were caught in a verbal dual over Narendra Modi’s 15 August speech with Abhishek Singhvi praising his speech and Manish Tiwari lashing out at Modi on the issue, a journalist asked a question to Shakeel Ahmad at the official Congress briefing why the Congress spokespersons were speaking in different voices. Singhvi who got the information about the question through the party’s press highlights of the day prepared by the media department immediately shot off a letter to Sonia Gandhi that he had not said anything against the party line but Manish Tiwari had got this question planted against him through one of his lackeys Arvind Choudhury. Now the poor journalist had to go around explaining that it was a genuine question and he had not met Choudhury. The entry of Choudhury has now been banned in AICC. Similarly another general secretary had the cheek to ask another journalist who had done a story on him Yeh AAP se kaun likhwata hai – who is the person who tells you to write all this against me leaving the journalist shocked.
Sheila Dikshit the Congress face in Delhi elections again
The three time Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit who could not get her party elected in the last assembly polls, will again be the face of the Congress in Delhi. Dikshit who was sent in exile to Kerala as governor after the party lost miserably in Delhi with only eight MLAs elected, has now returned on great demand from within the party to restore her and her party’s dignity. The thinking in the party is that though she was defeated, she alone has the stature to fight back the two parties, BJP and AAP. With the decline of AAP and encouraged by the latest results indicating the mood of the voters, the Congress thought it the right time to call her back.
Swapan dasgupta to be rewarded by Narendra Modi
After the governors, it is now the turn of the UPA appointed envoys to foreign countries to be recalled and replaced by the BJP appointees .If the going buzz in the corridors of power is to be believed, the journalist Swapan Das Gupta who gave up his career to work for the Bharatiya Janata Party is tipped to bag the high profile post of India’s envoy to UK replacing Ranjan Mathai. Swapan who has been waiting in the wings for years will be rewarded by Narendra Modi for shifting his loyalty from L K Advani to Modi. Initially it was Advani who got him and gave him the status of the member of the BJP’s think tank team. There are however senior people in BJP who do not want Swapan to be given that coveted position. The turmoil continues.
Pramod Kumar Mishra the new power centre in PMO
The Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary Nripendra Mishra, the UP cadre officer whom Narendra Modi went out of his way to bring through an ordinance, no more enjoys the power and confidence a Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary should have. He has now been eclipsed by Modi’s most trusted man Pramod Kumar Misra. Pramod Kumar Misra a Gujarat cadre officer of 1972 batch who has joined Narendra Modi’s PMO as additional Principal Secretary is now the Prime Minister’s Man Friday. PK Misra a confidante of Modi is fast emerging as the new power centre pushing Nripendra Mishra to the side lines. The UP cadre officer is said to have lost out to PK Misra after he gave an interview to a daily newspaper spelling out the top priorities of the Modi government. This was just not acceptable to Modi who after few days brought in his most trusted officer from his home state Gujarat PK Misra as number two to Nripendra Mishra. Now all the files reach only PK Misra’s room while all of them might not necessarily reach Nripendra Mishra’s office. Communication with the cabinet secretary and other departmental secretaries are also being done by PK Misra
PMO keeping a close watch on cabinet ministers
All kind of stories are doing the rounds about how Prime Minister Narendra Modi is disciplining his ministers. Rajnath Singh has made the inner power struggle public as he alleged the hand of a cabinet minister who is known for his fondness of feeding the journalists with gossips and inside stories about the RSS top brass. Singh has demanded action against him. Rajnath has been made the scapegoat when it was the son of an ally minister who was summoned and given a tongue lashing and told to return the money. Another buzz is about the petroleum minister who went out with a businessman for a lunch at a 5 star hotel but had to return back without finishing his lunch after he got a call from the top boss who asked him to come and see him. He was told that he should not be seen again with any business man or industrialist. A similar story came out of the BJP gossip closet claiming that the power minister Piyush Goyal also got a call from the PMO when he took Adani for lunch in a five star hotel in Mumbai. What is true nobody knows but it shows the chinks in the party with one minister pitted against other. (IPA)