Rahul Gandhi’s aide has an astrological fix him
With the Congress showing no signs of revival, many incorrigible optimists are hoping for divine intervention. Among them are non-political youngsters of outgoing party president Rahul Gandhi’s core team who have other reasons to worry. A change of regime in the party would make them redundant. No wonder then that many of them are rushing to astrologers.
One of these young leaders recently visited Maharashtra to meet an astrologer who advised that Gandhi, 49, should get married if he wants his stars to change. Gandhi’s close aide has returned to Delhi with the astrologer’s prescription for an upturn in the outgoing party president’s political fortunes but doesn’t know quite how to convey it to him. He has discussed it with other members of Gandhi’s team but nobody is prepared to broach the subject with him. Gandhi has maintained that he is wedded to his work even though the Delhi rumour mill keeps churning out names of prospective brides.
The ministerial irritant
BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy is turning out to be a big irritant for ministers. The former union minister who had been dropped from the government by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his first term hasn’t been accommodated in his second term either. So, ministers have to grapple with an unhappy Rudy now.
On Tuesday, during a discussion on the Consumer Protection Bill, he cornered Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, asking why there was no respite for mobile subscribers from call drops, power consumers from sudden outages and air passengers from delays in flights. Even as Rudy was making his point, Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh got up to answer the query about power consumers. Rudy, however, refused to allow him to speak, insisting that he was “not yielding” to the minister.
Singh had to sit down; he kept raising his hands to seek permission from Speaker Om Birla to respond but to no avail, much to the amusement of other parliamentarians. Paswan chose to skirt any direct reply to Rudy’s points. The BJP MP from Saran had earlier given a tough time to IT minister Ravishankar Prasad last week.
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Finance ministry’s Rajasthan jinx
Subhash Chandra Garg’s removal as finance secretary and his subsequent decision to opt for early retirement, as opposed to working as the power secretary, has led to frenzied speculation, with several questions being raised about whether he ended up becoming the fall-guy for poor decisions. Garg, however, is not the first secretary in the finance ministry to be unceremoniously shunted by the Narendra Modi government.
In 2014, soon after coming to power, the government removed then finance secretary Arvind Mayaram — a UPA appointee — and sent him to the Minority Affairs Ministry. Later that year, then financial services secretary G.S. Sandhu was also shifted out of the ministry.
In all, three senior bureaucrats in the finance ministry have been shown the door by the Modi government. The coincidence? All three IAS officers belong to the Rajasthan cadre. While Mayaram is a 1978-batch officer, Sandhu is from the 1980 batch and Garg is from the 1983 one. This has led to whispers in the power corridors about a possible jinx for the Rajasthan cadre in the finance ministry under Modi’s watch.
(Contributors: Deeksha Bhardwaj, DK Singh and Ruhi Tewari)
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