Unhappy leaders

Grapevine is abuzz with rumours that former Union ministers, Dilip Ray and Braja Kishore Tripathy, both currently in the Bhartiya Janata Party, may soon become the standard bearers of Janata Dal (United) in Orissa. Apparently neither of these leaders, who joined the saffron outfit on the eve of last elections, is comfortable with the RSS stranglehold on the party. They are also distinctly unhappy with the laidback attitude of state BJP leaders who appear to have lost the appetite for a fight following the party’s severe drubbing in the 2009 elections. Sources said the two former ministers, who even otherwise were an ideological mismatch in the BJP, have been in touch with JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. If things work out as planned they might make the switch sooner than expected, added sources.

 

Falling stock

Revenue and disaster management minister Surya Narayan Patra seems to have fallen out of favour with chief minister Naveen Patnaik. The most visible sign of this is his omission from the seven-member ministerial committee constituted recently to deal with the fake caste certificate racket, a major source of social strife in several districts of the state. Since important revenue-related issues were involved in the matter, the absence of Patra in the committee has set tongues wagging. Sources said the revenue minister, who was till recently Naveen’s pointsman in Ganjam district, received the first blow when the royal scion from Chikiti, Usha Devi, was inducted into the cabinet and chief minister’s loyalists from Ganjam started flocking to her. The omission from the caste panel is yet another setback for Patra who must be worried about his plummeting stock in the ruling party.

 

Sports quota fix

School and mass education minister Pratap Jena finds himself in the midst of an unsavoury controversy following allegations that Plus Two admission rules were sought to be bent for his son. Sources said that the minister’s son had opted for BJB and Ravenshaw colleges as his first and second choice, respectively. While he failed to make the grade in BJB, he also fell below the cut-off percentage in the Raveshaw College. Following this Ravenshaw College authorities were asked to provide special weightage to admission seekers under sports quota apparently to ensure that the minister’s son finally made the cut. Sources said there were also certain procedural problems involved in the matter. Now, the Ravenshaw authorities are said to be in a fix - whether to apply the sports quota rule uniformly in case of all students or reject it outright at this stage of admission. The minister, however, is reported to have denied having tried to push his son’s case.

Out of spotlight

 

Former Union minister and Kalahandi MP Bhakta Charan Das has been out of news for quite sometime now. Normally his name used to crop up on the eve of UPA’s ministerial rejigs in Delhi as one of the probables from Orissa. But even that did not happen on the eve of the last reshuffle effected by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Green Kalahandi movement launched by him to fight the “nefarious” corporate designs against the bauxite-rich Niyamgiri hills also appears to have lost steam, partly because of the fact that nothing much is actually happening on the mining front at the moment. Bhakta Babu, it seems, has to think of something else to keep himself in circulation.

 

Public image hit

The Rajya Sabha horse trading controversy was raked up all over again when some obscure political activists sought to lodge a police complaint against chief minister Naveen Patnaik and two of his ministerial colleagues alleging attempts to buy over Opposition MLAs. This time round, however, the allegations have left the chief minister and ruling party leaders more amused than worried as they come from virtual nobodies. However, one man who appears to be distinctly worried is Congress MLA, Shibaji Majhi who is one of the Opposition legislators whom the ruling party allegedly tried to buy over. Majhi, according to sources, is concerned about his plummeting stocks in the Congress and the deeply dented public image in the wake of the controversy that has harmed him more than anyone else.

 

Mid-day meal dilemma

One wonders whether school and mass education minister Pratap Jena is happy or worried about the government’s recent decision to hand over the mid-day meal scheme to his department. Many think that given its controversial background, the scheme could turn out to be a poised chalice for Jena. As it is the mid-day meal scheme has already claimed the job of a ruling party minister who had to go following allegations of irregularities in the supply of pulses. In fact, it was in the wake of this scandal that the government began thinking in terms of shifting the burden of running the scheme from the women and child welfare department to the school and mass education department.