Letter from Delhi: Playing dirty for power in Haryana

Politicians will stop at nothing to do their rivals in. Within hours of Bhajan Lal throwing his hat in the ring for Haryana chief ministership, a compact disc surfaced against him.

A select group of politicians and journalists who received it the day the newly-elected Congress legislators met in Chandigarh, and left the choice of the leader to Sonia Gandhi, were unable to pinpoint the senders' name or address.

But it was clear that it was aimed at jeopardising the Congress leader's chances of heading the state for a record fourth time. That was the vital clue which indicated that the CD might well be the handiwork of Congressmen opposed to Lal becoming the state chief minister yet again.

The CD shows Lal enjoying himself while a semi-clad young girl dances a jig in front of him. He is so moved by the lascivious sight at one stage that he pecks her cheek to goad her to dance on. There is no third person in the CD, though it is hard to say whether the two were captured on film with his permission. Mischief by hidden cameras cannot, however, be ruled out.

In office but not in power

It could well be said of Manmohan Singh that he is in office but not in power. On the day the results of elections in Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand brought not so happy tidings for the ruling Congress Party, Singh was in Kashmir.

When a correspondent wanted to know his reaction to the electoral setback the Congress Party had suffered, the PM pleaded ignorance, saying he wasn't aware of the results. This when the entire country had learnt of the results from myriad private TV channels!

Sex and politics on TV

Talking of smutty CDs, it seems that miniature cameras were surreptitiously installed in a couple of rooms in Bihar Bhawan in the capital, allegedly in collusion with a caretaker of the premises. So when senior leaders of the State were holed up in the Bhawan with locally procured call girls, the sly cameras fixed in the ceiling fans over the beds recorded the illicit affairs for posterity.

When portions of these tapes were last week telecast by a relatively new news channel, embarrassed politicians made inquiries. And it revealed a tale of sleaze as depressing as the actual action caught on the cameras.

Fed up with the arrogant and rude behaviour of one of the Bihar MPs who was a close relative of the RJD boss, Lalu Prasad Yadav, an official of the Bihar Bhawan asked the middleman to install one of his miniature cameras in one of the guest rooms so that he could fix him. Since the middleman was beholden to the caretaker for having introduced him to quite a few Bihar MPs, he obliged. How the offending film found its way to the TV channel is still not clear.

The writer is a well-known columnist.