Letter from Delhi: Strange 'switch' by Jaswant Singh

Union Finance Minister Jaswant Singh surprised everyone by his controversial role in the on-going telecom war. As the Chairman of the Group of Ministers tasked to untangle the awfully messy telecom wires between the rival WLL and cellular operators, Singh played a rather curious role. He seemed less interested in balancing the scales of justice and equity between the WLL Goliath and the cellular Davids. And was more keen to legitimise retrospectively the rank illegality committed by major WLL service provider. Since he wasn't known to be overly friendly towards the WLL , Singh's partisan role shocked his friends all the more. But his critics were not surprised. They were quick to read ulterior motives in his open tilt towards the private sector company which had had its way in spite of a clear violation of the provisions of its WLL license.

In one of the very first GOMmeetings, Singh made his intention clear. " The WLL player has boarded the train without ticket. Now it is our task to give him the ticket after whatever penalty we may choose to impose," he is reported to have remarked. But instead of approaching the issue with an open mind, he and Telecom Minister Arun Shourie, teamed up to legitimise the WLL operations by levying a relatively minor penalty on the company involved. No wonder, the cellular operators were left seething with anger at what appeared to many independent observers the broad daylight collusion between the Vajpayee Government and the WLL major.

By all accounts, the lone member of the GOM who put up a valiant fight for fair play in the telecom sector was Minister for Law, Justice and Commerce Arun Jaitley.

The party is over

The Sangh parivar is not the monolith it is made out to be. It too suffers from the same failings which not long ago had led to the decline and fall of the Congress Party. Senior BJP leaders push their own personal agendas and patronise their own `durbaris'. This sorry state of affairs in the BJP was evident the other day when the party organised a condolence meeting for the Lt. Governor of Pondicherry, K.R. Malkani, who died last month. At the instance of Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, the condolence meeting was held in the sprawling lawns of the Vithalbhai Patel House. The morning papers had carried big paid notices on the meeting. But despite such wide publicity not more than 100 odd mourners turned up for the meeting which was addressed by BJP Chief Venikah Naidu besides Advani and Vajpayee.

Fighting in public

By now it is amply clear that the Supreme Court-scarred Mayawati is in active collusion with the Congress Party. She has fielded candidates in the coming Assembly elections with the sole objective of defeating the BJP. The BSP lists of candidates were finalised after informal parleys with the Congress leaders in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. A majority of the BSP candidates belonged to the same caste as that of their BJP rivals so that the former could eat into the votes of the latter.

The BJP too has its not-so-covert links with the breakaway BSP faction in MP which is led by the popular Phool Singh Baraiyya. The party would lend him all possible assistance so that he could do to the Congress Party what Mayawati wants to do to the BJP in the coming battle of hustings.

Blame it on TV

In these days of TV coverage of the entire electoral process, Delhi BJP leader Madan Lal Khurana finds himself at a disadvantage against his telegenic Congress rival Sheila Dixit. Khurana and Dixit recently crossed swords at a debate organised by a city newspaper. Those who heard the debate thought Khurana had got the better of the outgoing Delhi Chief Minister, but those who saw it on TV thought otherwise. A friendly scribe recalled the advice once offered by the late Jag Pravesh Chandra. The veteran Congress leader had told him amidst loud guffaws that while 'others think with an open mind, Khurana thinks with an open mouth.'