11 June 2003
IMPORTANCE
OF ADVANI: CABINET MEETINGS ON HOLD
From Jal
Khambata
NEW DELHI: Importance of Deputy Prime Minister
Lal Krishna Advani in running the Government is all there to see.
Even the Cabinet does not hold the weekly Tuesday meeting when he is
away on the foreign tour.
Unwritten instructions have gone out
to the Cabinet Secretary that there will be no Cabinet meeting until
June 19.
Eralier Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had gone
abroad and the Cabinet meetings were put on hold even during his
absence from India. Advani has been obviously put on par with the PM
as no Cabinet meetings are being allowed without him.
The
powers that Advani now hold in running the government have
systematically gone up since after he was elevated as the deputy
prime minister as many important files that otherwise used to go to
the Prime Minister are now either submitted to him or routed through
him.
Some may see it as Advani marginalising Vajpayee in the
Government but the truth is that Vajpayee himself wanted to unburden
himself from the routine file work that he had to undertake and hence
Advani is only sharing his burden.
There is a coordination
section of the Union Cabinet Secretariat that arranges and
distributes the top secret papers for the Cabinet meetings. The
section is almost empty presently as many have proceeded on leave
after being told that they will have no work until June 19.
Sources
in the PMO point out how considerate Vajpayee is towards Advani that
he would not even call the Cabinet meetings in his absence unlike of
Advani who felt nothing wrong in the BJP meeting he attended in
Hyderabad during Vajpayee's sojourn abroad and released a 25-point
agenda for the elections, nicknaked by him personally as "Mission
2004."
The Cabinet Secretariat sources are, however,
careful to stress that it is not because of Advani's absence that the
Cabinet meetings are not taking place. They point out that only
skeleton Cabinet meetings are held during June to avoid the summer
heat and it has been so as well in case of the previous Congress
Governments of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and P V Narasimha
Rao.
Meanwhile, the Intelligence Bureau has mounted a
high-level meeting on the leakage of the information relating to the
wives of eight senior officers in the entourage of Advani who has
himself taken along his wife, son and daughter on the ongoing trip to
the United States and Britain.
Since IB Chief Kunal P Singh
happens to be among the officers whose wives have joined the tour to
escape the scorching heat of Delhi, phone calls and fax messages flew
between him and the IB headquarters here since Tuesday evening after
Congress spokesman Anand Sharma questioned propriety of the
bureaucrats' wives in Advani's team on the basis of a report in this
newsaper. Sharma wondered if it were a joy trip or really something
to do with mobilising international opinion against the
Pakistan-sponsored terrorism as it was sought to be stressed before
Advani flew off to America last Saturday.
Sources said K P
Singh had personally spoken to Advani about the controversy that had
blown up about the wives. He wanted to know what kind of
clarification should be given. Advani's reported cousel was to better
ignore it and wait until he returns to India and explains everything
personally.
Newspapers were, however, approached to plead that
anybody travelling first class by Air India gets an extra free ticket
for the companion and the wives have taken advantage of this free
facility which costs nothing to the exchequer. Those trying to
influence the Media to ignore the Congress objection, however,
hastily backed out when questions were raised about the cost of the
hotels stay which would be more than Rs 2 lakhs per head and a
battery of vehicles ordered to be kept at the disposal of all those
accompanying Advani at various locations.
The BJP tried to
belittle the Congress for finding faults with persons accompanying
Advani instead of reacting on the various meetings he has been
holding with the top American leaders, including President George
Bush.
In a report to the IB chief, his sleuths have also
sought to put blame on the PTI news agency for circulating on Monday
the photograph of Mrs Kamla Advani, wife of the Deputy Prime
Minister, with NRIs in Washington on Sunday. Though others in the
photograph were described as NRI, all eight wives accompanying their
husbands in Advani's entourage could be easily identified in the
photograph, the IB report to its chief said.
The same news
agency had also circulated another photograph showing Advani, his
wife, son and daughter travelling by train from New York to
Washington. The IB reports suspects that someone in PTI was specially
tipped off to catch Advani's family and the wives on camera to rake
up a political controversy in Delhi.
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