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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