Will Pranab and PC bury the hatchet?

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has so far enjoyed a harmonious working relationship with the governors in his home state even though they were appointed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. He was, therefore, confident of improving his record now that the new governor, former Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Although it is early days yet, but Ms Patel has, so far, not given an opportunity to the chief minister to ingratiate himself to her.

Mr Chouhan’s first brush with the new governor has not proved to be too encouraging. In an effort to layout the red carpet for her, the chief minister ensured that a chartered plane was kept ready to transport her from Ahmedabad to Bhopal. But Ms Patel was obviously not impressed. Instead she chose to travel to Madhya Pradesh’s capital by road on a chartered bus along with her family members, which also took her through the Patidar-dominated areas. Plunging into work shortly after her swearing in, Ms Patel attended several programmes that same day.

Mr Chouhan is now said to be on the lookout for some intermediaries who can help him establish friendly relations with Ms Patel, who has demonstrated that she has not given up on an active political career.

Ever since Congress president Rahul Gandhi picked Kannada actor-turned-politician Divya Spandana, better known by her stage name Ramya, to head the party’s virtually-dormant social media department last year, there has been a dramatic turnaround in his and the party’s presence in the social media and digital space. Having lagged behind the BJP for nearly a decade, the Congress Party’s improved use of social media communication has not gone unnoticed by its political rivals either.

Virtually unknown in Congress circles till less than a year ago, Ramya is now the new rising star in the party. Naturally, this has led to fresh tensions and rivalries within the Congress as there are many who resent Ramya’s success and her easy access to Mr Gandhi. There have been murmurs in the Congress that Ramya’s team and the communications department headed by Randeep Surjewala are not pulling together though they are supposed to work in tandem. This speculation gained further ground when no member of Ramya’s team was spotted at a special lunch hosted recently by Mr Surjewala for the media.

It is no secret that relations between former President Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram were anything but cordial during their tenure as ministers in the UPA government. The tension between the two surfaced often. When Mr Chidambaram was home minister, Mr Mukherjee (as finance minister) had written directly to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to complain that his office was being bugged and even called his own team to investigate the matter. The implication of this complaint was obvious.

Similarly, Mr Chidambaram was convinced that it was Mr Mukherjee who sought to implicate him in the 2G spectrum scam. A temporary truce between them was called only after Mr Mukherjee was virtually forced to offer a public explanation exonerating Mr Chidambaram. In view of their strained relationship in the past, it is intriguing that Mr Mukherjee will be releasing Mr Chidambaram’s new book, Speaking Truth to Power, at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library on January 29. The former President’s speech on the occasion is bound to be followed closely as it will indicate whether the two senior leaders have truly decided to bury the proverbial hatchet.

Given that finance minister Arun Jaitley and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal have been slugging it out in the courts in a defamation case for over a year now, everyone was surprised to see the two together in a photograph last week looking quite comfortable in each other’s company. What was even more curious was that the photograph was splashed in all the newspapers the same day the Election Commission recommended the disqualification of 21 MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party on the charge of holding office of profit. Mr Jaitley subsequently clarified that he was attending a dinner hosted by the Delhi government at the Garden of Five Senses for members of the GST Council, which met in the capital earlier that day. It was pointed out that since the GST Council has been holding its meetings in different cities, it has become standard practice for state governments to host its members over dinner. For instance, the Telangana government pulled out all stops to host a lavish meal for state finance ministers at the luxurious Taj Falaknuma, the palace hotel, when the GST Council held its meeting in Hyderabad last year. Incidentally, it is the same hotel where Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted US President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump when she came to India last November to attend the annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit.