Dr Suresh Mehrotra, the ace whisperer

Rakesh Dixit

His index finger of the right hand up, eyes twinkling and face smiling, septuagenarian editor-in-chief Dr Suresh Mehrotra quipped, ‘the God is our CMD’.   The finger was pointed at the portrait of Sai Baba just above his chair in the small office room abutting Dr Mehrotra’s residence in 45 Bungalows locality in Bhopal.

This affable, if somewhat narcissist, teacher-turned-journalist owns a website, which has been offering staple diet of gossips to thousands of All India Service officers, corporate honchos and politicians about transfer-postings in the top echelons in India for the last 13 years.

Over 2.56 crore hits on the whispersinthecorridor.com suggest only a part of the website’s phenomenal success. A plethora of government and corporate advertisements cluttering the website too don’t fully explain its enormous popularity.

If the daily feedback from the targeted readers is anything to go by, the top Babus in the North and South blocks in the national capital start their day in the office with visiting the whispersinthecorridor.com every day. Feedbacks also come from states across India.

Dr Mehrotra himself is dazzled by its success. With a child-like glee he attributed it solely to the blessings of Sai Baba, whose photograph adorns the website. “That’s why I say the CMD of my website is the God’, he averred, again raising the index finger upwards to the Sai Baba’s portrait.

“ You will be amazed over the kind of feedback I get every day. Top bureaucrats I have never seen, much less met, provide information about themselves and their colleagues. Have a look at this bit of information. A newly appointed high commissioner has requested me to put information about his posting in the website”, Dr Mehrotra gushed, showing feedback on his personal mail account.

His enthusiasm didn’t stop there. Next moment, he quickly got up from the chair and rushed to his drawing room. Within seconds he returned carrying three books. All three had mentioned his website. The books were Dr Sajnay Baru’s ‘An Accidental Prime Minister’, PC Parekh’s ‘Conspirator or Crusader’ and PM Nair’s ‘My Years with the President’.

Former media adviser to the then PM, Dr Baru and former coal secretary PC Parekh have mentioned the website as a source for goings-in in the PMO of Dr Man Mohan Singh. Former secretary to the then President APJ Kalam has written in his memoirs that ‘his heart sank on not finding his name in the whispersinthecorridors.com.

“ I know none of them. But they trusted my website as a source. That is the secret of its success’, averred the editor-in-chief, putting down the books on the table. In fact, he added, he didn’t know most of the people whose names figured in the website.

Amazed by success of the website, two scholars of the Indian institute of information technology and management , Gwalior, Manoj Kumar Dash and Ajay Singh undertook a case study to ascertain secrets of its popularity in 2011.

Their study–, Innovation approaches of whispersinthecorridors.com” in the field of Indian bureaucracy– concluded that   main reason behind the success is targeting the bureaucracy and corporate elites.

Dr Mehrotra’s candour only serves to deepen the mystery of the website’s success. He remains largely confined to his house-cum-office. Once, he was an active journalist who could be spotted at the secretariat and the state police headquarters every day. But for a last decade or so, his main sources of information are newspapers and feedbacks. He is seldom seen outside the house.

The wealth of information he has acquired came gradually, as the website’s popularity grew. Foundation of the website had been laid 32 years ago when Dr Mehrotra started a gossip column in the Free Press, Indore, as its Bhopal bureau chief. Title of the column was the same- whispersinthecorridor.

In those days, the column was a novelty. Hindi newspapers would eschew writing such gossips. And Free Press was the only significant English newspaper in Bhopal. The column was an instant hit with the bureaucracy.

Of course, not all bureaucrats liked the column. Many sneered at what they called gossip-mongering in the name of journalism. But they found it irresistible.

A retired IAS officer said he always considered the column a low-brow stuff but would read it all the same.

“ That holds true even now for the website. Most bureaucrats surf it out of curiosity. The one-liner information on peers’ and colleagues’ transfer-postings are easy on eyes,” he remarked.

Despite its clumsy and monotonous style, the column was seen as a barometer of the incumbent chief minister’s mood in Madhya Pradesh. Dr Mehrotra reveled in his popularity, so much so that he would seldom write other reports. He is, self-admittedly, not of an intellectual type. Long or analytical stories are not his forte, to put it mildly.

His years as history professor in Ujjain have hardly distracted him from pursuing one-line journalism in the website which he proudly dubs his USP.

He has steadfastly rejected proposals to tweak with the template of the website to accommodate long articles and profiling of the persons featured in it.

It was essentially his column and the contacts it accrued to him that helped Dr Mehrotra go places.

From Free Press, he moved to Hindustan Times as its Bhopal correspondent in 1991, presumably due to cordial relations with late Madhavrao Scindia. Three years later, his resourcefulness attracted Bhaskar group’s chairman Ramesh Agrawal. Dr Mehrotra joined the group first as executive editor of Dainik Bhaskar and then editor of National Mail.

As editor, however, he was not very successful. Encumbrances that the editor’s job entailed did not fit in with his journalistic skills. His last stint in print journalism as editor of little known Naveen Dunia of Bhopal ended in a near-disaster in 2001 and he decided to quit journalism.

“ My last employer would not hike salary. The paper was sinking. I saw no point in hanging around for long. So, I decided enough was enough”.

Unemployed for a while, Dr Mehrotra hit upon the idea of launching his own website. He chose to retain the name of his column for the website.

In those days, website was not in vogue. Dr Mehrotra was nervous.

“ But I had great faith in the god. I persevered single-handedly. The contacts I had cultivated all these years stood me in good stead and the website began to grow in volume and popularity”, he wistfully recalled.

When he started the website 13 years ago, Dr Mehrotra mostly relied on his own network in the bureaucracy that he had cultivated during his 18 years in print medium in Bhopal and New Delhi. His guileless demeanour had earned him a legion of movers and shakers in the corridors of power. All India service officers and politicians would flock to his house. It took a while for a mild-mannered Dr Mehrotra to overcome the awe that visitors inspired in him. For, before shifting to Bhopal in 1982, Dr Mehrotra used to teach history in Madhav college, Ujjain. He was a part time journalist too.

Bhopal transformed his personality from a shy, small-town youth to an influential English journalist. His childhood friend late Sudip Banerjee, IAS, who was a close confidant of then chief minister Arjun Singh, contributed a lot in Dr Mehrotra’s makeover.

The friendship got Dr Mehrotra close to Arjun Singh. Within a couple of years, he became a frequent visitor to the CM house. Arjun Singh also reciprocated the gesture by frequently visiting Dr Mehrotra’s house, an honour the late Congress stalwart had shown to only a few journalists in Bhopal.

However, unlike other Arjun Singh-loyalists in the media, Dr Mehrotra was not hypocrite about his relationship. “ I never concealed my thick relations with Arjun Singh , or, for that matter, any politician. I never bothered what people said about me”, he averred.

However, even his bitterest critics could not discover a trace of personal corruption in him. His neighbor and former journalist ND Sharma admits that Dr Mehrotra belongs to that rare breed of journalists who did not exploit their contacts to   feather their own nests. ND Sharma has been an inveterate anti-establishment journalist in his days in the Indian Express  from where he retired in 1999.

Despite success, Dr Mehrotra is acutely conscious of the fact that he has crossed 70 and not getting younger. He is willing to sale his website for a good price.

“ Many offers have come to me. Several media barons approached with the offer as high as Rs 10 crore but they want me to continue. They say they can’t run the website without me on it. If that is the condition, I am happy running the website on my own.”, Dr Mehrotra said.

He works 10 to 12 hours every day. “ My day in the office begins at 7.30 and continues till night”. He has a staff of eight persons including two marketing personnel.

The whisper in the corridor also comes out in print every month.

However, its format is unchanged. No long write-ups, no interviews, no analyses. He does not see merit in stuff beyond one-line gossips. And the website’s success has proved him right.

How would Shivraj govt have acted in ‘Ghar Vapsi’ ?

Rakesh Dixit

On November 4 this year, Bajrang Dal activists mercilessly beat up over half a dozen Christians in Kotla village near Bhopal, accusing them of attempting to convert Hindus. A month before, Hindutva activists had forced the Alirajpur district administration to ban a Christian gathering that was being organised in the backdrop of marriage of a Christian boy with a Hindu girl. In the same month two Dalit youths in Shivpuri districts were booked for converting to Islam under the MP Freedom of Religion Act 1968 in Shivpuri district. They were  charged with converting their wives too.

In the backdrop of the three incidents, it is interesting to surmise how would have the Shivraj Singh Chouhan  government acted if the raging controversy on religious reconversion, euphemistically  dubbed as “Ghar Vapasi” had taken place in Madhya Pradesh ,not Uttar Pradesh ? Would the government have booked members of the Hindutva outfit that organised reconversion of 25 Muslim families to Hinduism under the provisions of the MP Freedom of religious Act, 1968 ?

The act provides a jail term of one year for forcible conversions. The term is up to two years when the convert is a minor, a woman or a member of SC/ST. In fact, the obstinate convertors of Agra would have faced a jail term up to three years or a fine up to Rs 50,000, or both, if the state government’s MP Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2013 had got the Presidential assent.

The amendment stipulates more stringent action for conversion using force, allurement or any other fraudulent means. When the person being converted is a minor, a woman or an SC/ST, the jail term will extend up to four years and fine up to Rs 1 lakh.

Mercifully, the obnoxious spectacle of ‘Ghar Vapsi’ has not occurred in Madhya Pradesh. BJP in the state is too strong to need such provocative tactic for polarising voters for votes. The government has admitted that cases of forced conversion in the state are negligible.

Nevertheless, the Shivraj government’s not-so-covert support to the Bajrang Dal and VHP was evident.  In the Alirajpur incident, the superintendent of police (SP) buckled under the Hindutva outfit’s pressure to declare the marriage between Joseph Pawar and Ayushi Wani null and void. The couple was arrested in Gujarat where they had gone to get married and brought back to Jorbat. . However, Ayushi refused to return to her parents and was brought to the Nari Niketan Trust, an association that welcomes and supports women ,who are widowed, divorced and poor.

About the Shivpuri incident, the police said Maniram Jatav, resident of Khanidana village, embraced Islam two years ago, changed his name to Abdullah and started a small business in the area. Maniram then lured Tularam Jatav, a labour for religious conversion, said police. Tularam changed his name to Abdul Kareem in 2013. The matter surfaced after he forced his wife to embrace Islam. She reported the matter to her family who subsequently approached an organization and got a complaint registered.

“Maniram is a convert and also the convertor. Investigations revealed that both of them had violated the law for religion conversion,” said SS Jadon, station house officer (SHO) of Khanidana police station where the FIR was registered. During investigations Tularam alias Abdul Kareem submitted an affidavit that he wanted to be a Hindu again.

Not only were the accused and their wives were arrested, but Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal activists ensured that they were reconverted to Hinduism.

A number of applications for religious conversion now lie with the state government, which refuses to act on them, even as right-wing organisations threatened punitive measures such as the destruction of standing crops and dispossession of land and other property for Dalits who dare to convert in the future. In Madhya Pradesh, it seems, conversions are banned if they take place away from Hinduism.

Before the last assembly elections, the BJP government had proposed the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill, 2013 against the 1968 legislation mandating prior permission was compulsory. It also provides for a stringent jail term for forcible conversions.

While the 1968 legislation provided a jail term of one year for forcible conversions, the proposed bill stipulates a jail term   up to three years or a fine up to Rs 50,000, or both, for conversion done using force, allurement or any other fraudulent means.

A  move by the MP government to pass a similar amendment in 2006 was rejected by the President on grounds that it will violate freedom of religion guaranteed in the Constitution because it insists on prior permission.

While British India had no anti-conversion laws, in the post-independence era, Parliament took up for consideration in 1954 the Indian Conversion (Regulation and Registration) Bill and later in 1960 the Backward Communities (Religious Protection) Bill. Both had to be dropped for lack of support.

However, in 1968, MP government enacted Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya Adhiniyam 1968. The law made forced conversion a cognisable offence under sections 295 A and 298 of the Indian Penal Code that stipulate that malice and deliberate intention to hurt the sentiments of others is a penal offence punishable for varying durations of imprisonment and fines.

In the act, the punishment was to be doubled if the offence had been committed in respect of a minor, a woman or a person belonging to the Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe community.

It was clear that the law was aimed to keep the low caste Hindus within the fold of Hinduism. And so while the law prohibits conversion, `reconversion’ of low caste Hindus is permissible. If a low caste Hindu who had converted to another faith or any of his descendants reconverts to Hinduism, he might get back his original caste (Kailash Sonkar (1984) 2 SCC 91; S. Raja Gopal AIR 1969 SC 101). The law got a shot in the arm in 1977 when the then chief justice of India AN Ray ruled that propagation of religion is different from conversion. The controversial ruling came in the case challenging the validity of the Madhya Pradesh and Orissa Acts. The case is known in the annals of judicial history as Reverend Stainislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1977 SC 908) and Yulitha v. State of Orissa and others.

Justice Ray expressed the view that “what Article 25(1) of the Constitution grants is not the right to convert another person to one’s own religion by exposition of its tenets.” On the question of legislative competence, the court was of the opinion that since any attempt at conversion was likely to result in a breach of public order affecting the community at large, the State legislatures would have the competence to enact legislation which is likely to avoid disturbances to the public order by prohibiting conversion from one religion to another in a manner reprehensible to the conscience of the community.

In the light of the court judgement, two priests and a nun were sentenced to imprisonment on the charge of forcible conversion by a Raigarh court in Madhya Pradesh. This despite a written communication sent to the District Magistrate, the SDM and the SO (Police) claiming they had changed their religion voluntarily and without any allurement.

Conversion is often a core part of religion. In fact, in Stanislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, if the Supreme Court had consulted the Constituent Assembly records it would have found that “propagation” in Article 25 explicitly refers to the right to convert. An amendment to remove the word “propagation” was even defeated in the assembly.

In fact, restricting conversion not only violates the right to religion but also the right to free speech. Moreover, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ensures that a person’s right to religion also includes the “freedom to change his religion or belief“.

The state has no business policing the religious beliefs of its citizens; neither is it in a position to allow or disallow a change of faith if India is to be a liberal state.

With the rise of Hindutva forces in 1990 in MP, voices against conversions to Christianity have become more strident.

In 2013, the Shivraj Singh government amended  the anti-conversion legislation to provide for prior permission compulsory and a stringent jail term for forcible conversions.

He bill seeks to amend the 1968 legislation on the ground that it stipulated lesser punishment, and was, therefore, ineffective to stop conversions.

While the 1968 legislation required the priest to inform the district magistrate after the conversion ceremony, the amendment proposes to make it compulsory for the priest to take a prior permission for the proposed conversion. The amendment proposes that even the newly convert will have to inform authorities within a stipulated time.

The BJP government had passed a similar amendment in 2006 but the President rejected it, saying it violated the freedom of religion guaranteed in the constitution because it insists on prior permission.

The amended legislation had been sent to the President by then Governor Balram Jakhar.  The governor also asked the state government to give details of conversions that took place in each district of the state.

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Congress’s existential crisis in MP

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Rakesh Dixit

On January 15, Arun Yadav got the MPCC chief post as his 40th birthday gift. Unmindful of the utter failure of his protégé as AICC secretary and union minister of state, Congress vice president  Rahul Gandhi  reposed  faith in the eldest son of  former MP deputy chief minister  late Subhash  Yadav a third time. That Rahul with all his talks of empowering the dispossessed in the Congress is still enamoured of dynastic politics was evident in Arun’s surprising elevation. Arun had started his political career barely seven years ago. At 33, he became Lok Sabha member in the bye-poll from his father’s Khargone constituency following disqualification of the sitting BJP MP Krishna Murari Moghe in 2007.

Moghe had been disqualified for holding office of profit when he contested 2004 Lok Sabha election. Yadav won again for the Lok Sabha in 2009, this time from adjoining Khandwa seat and was inducted in the Dr Man Mohan Singh cabinet as union minister for heavy industries. Later he was shifted in the same capacity to the agriculture ministry. When his performance didn’t improve , Arun was divested of the post and made AICC secretary.  He unsuccessfully sought re-election from Khandwa seat in 2014 Lok Sabha election.

His successive failures didn’t dissuade Rahul Gandhi to nominate Arun Yadav as head of the poll-battered Congress in Madhya Pradesh. Hardly anyone  in the sate Congress seemed enthused by Yadav’s elevation, given his record of failures and brief career in politics. Demoralised Congressmen and women were expecting a dynamic leader to steer the party out of the morass it had sucked  into. They feared the new man at the helm of the state Congress will lead to greater disaster. In the last one year since Arun took over, the worst fears of the party men have come true with shocking rapidity. Under Yadav’s disastrous leadership, an existential crisis is staring at the moribund MP Congress.

Barely four months after he took over, a clueless Arun committed a series of blunders when he was supposed to resuscitate the fragmented party in the run up to the Lok Sabha election. He would seldom look beyond his coterie of loyalists for suggestions even as the clamour for Lok Sabha ticket kept growing.

The Congress seemed reduced to a pathetic spectacle while a cocky BJP surged ahead in candidate selection as well as campaigning. Of course, the Modi wave was favouring the BJP, but there was no dearth of issues for the Congress to corner the Shivraj Singh government. The multi-layered admission and recruitment scam (VYAPAM) had begun to unfold. Every day, new facts were surfacing about the complicity of the BJP leaders in the scam. The Shivraj government was on the defensive.  The Congressmen and women sensed a great opportunity in the unfolding scam to gain electoral advantage at the expense of the mortified Shivraj government.

But Arun let them down. His pusillanimity caused revulsion in the cadres on one hand and disillusionment among state leaders , on the other.  As a result, the Congress was completely routed. The two seats—Guna and Chhindwara- that the Congress managed to retain in the election were justifiably credited to individual influence of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath respectively. The worst ever showing of the Congress led to further isolation of the PCC chief. Since then, the state Congress headquarters in Bhopal has seldom, if ever, seen the kind of hustle and bustle that used to characterise it.

Arun Yadav, however, chose not to learn any lesson from the debacle. He is still surrounded by the coterie of inexperienced cohorts. Big leaders such as Digvijay Singh, jyotiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath and Suresh Pachori have stopped cooperating with the PCC chief. State’s media hardly takes note of the goings-on in the Congress.

Whatever little agitational politics has been seen on the state’s streets has been the outcome of  initiative of individual  Congress leaders  who no longer look to the PCC chief for direction.

Given the party’s sorry state of affairs, its crushing defeat in the civic body election was inevitable. The BJP has won in all the corporations for which elections were held in November 2014. Where the Congress managed to win in municipalities, the candidates succeeded despite of and not because of the state leadership.

One shocking example would suffice to indicate the cluelessness of Arun Yadav  vis-a-vis  the local body elections.  He acquiesced in the request of his crony and state general secretary Vimlendru Tiwari to field the wife of Tiwari’s brother in mayoral election for Rewa. She lost her deposit in the election. Kavita Pandey, a powerful claimant of Congress , who revolted after being denied ticket,  fought the election as independent . Kavita  secured  more votes than the Congress candidate. Had she been fielded by the Congress, the party could have atleast won the Rewa mayoral election.

Last week, Arun yadav admitted the mistake of heeding Vimlendu Tiwari’s request. The admission followed  Arun’s reprimand by Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi.  The party high command has asked Arun to clean up the mess in the party at the earliest. Arun’s response to the chastening is laughable. Instead of chalking out a strategy to ensure that disillusioned party men come on  board to fight the BJP  unitedly, he chose to get rid of his careless personal assistant and driver !

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Is Shivraj Singh Chouhan really secular ?

Rakesh Dixit

Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been organising a Charismas party at his official residence in Bhopal for many years. He also celebrates Eid, Guru Nanak Jayanti and Hindu festivals with Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus at his Shyamla hills house. The grand multi-religious celebrations have helped him burnish his secular image which translated into huge electoral support in successive elections for his party since he took over in 2006.

So, the Charismas party at his residence on December 26 night should have occasioned no surprise. But it did. This Christmas was celebrated amid raging controversies on the “Ghar Wapsi” and the deliberate observance of good governance day on the birth day of Jesus Christ by the Modi government. The twin rows have justifiably upset the Christian community.  

A shrewd follower of middle path, Chouhan managed to wriggle out of the controversies by observing the good governance day to mark Atal Behari Vajpayee’s birth day on December 25 and celebrating Christmas a day later. Thus, he neither defied the Modi government’s diktat nor the tradition of celebrating Christmas.

His ingenious handling of the RSS concerns on Minorities appeasement without risking the displeasure of the Muslim community was evident on the Eid this year. Unlike 2013, Chouhan desisted from wearing skull cap on 2014 Eid. The 2013 Eid had preceded the assembly election in the state, so it made a good political sense to wear the skull cap. His gesture, though hailed by the liberal-secular media, did not go down well with a large section of the Sangh Parivar. It triggered inevitable comparison between him and Narendra Modi who had famously declined a Muslim clergy’s offer to wear skull cap during harmony march in Gujarat in 2007. But Shivraj was apparently undaunted, primarily for two reasons; one, Narendra Modi  had not become Prime Minister then, and two; Shivraj had set  eye on 12% Muslim votes  in the run up to the assembly election in Madhya Pradesh. 

In fact, Shivraj Singh was so worried about possible fallout of Muslim opposition to Narendra Modi’s anointment as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate that he reportedly urged the party high command to defer  announcement till the assembly election in Madhya Pradesh. Although his plea went unheeded, Shivraj Singh still managed to win the confidence of the state’s Muslim voters. The BJP’s spectacular tally of 165 seats included the   two dozen-odd constituencies where Muslim voters are deciding factor. However, with all the goodwill of the Muslim community the BJP refrained from fielding a single Muslim candidate. But then , the Congress too has a lone Muslim MLA –Arif Aqeel- who would have  won  from his traditional Bhopal ( north )  anyway- Congress or no Congress.

Shivraj’s celebratory display of love to all religions gives rise to the question as to whether he is a genuine respecter of the much-vaunted ‘Sarva Dharm Sambhav’ ? Or, has he assiduously worked on his secular image for votes?

Admittedly, Shivraj was never known to be a rabid fundamentalist even when he was a youth leader during the high noon of the Ayodhya movement. But he was not an Atal Behari Vajpayee either. His fiery speeches as Bhartiya Janata Yuva Morcha ( BJYM) leader in those days  were redolent of irresponsible  Hindu pride but fell short of  hate mongering. He seemed to take cue from the devious arguments of LK Advani in strident defence of building Ram temple in Ayodhya on  stage. Off-stage, though, he sounded more like Atal Behari Vajpayee. No wonder, Shivraj managed to ingratiate himself to both the leaders. He won from the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat vacated by Vajpayee in 1991 and rose from place to place in next 15 years to become chief minister, courtesy Advani’s    indulgence.

As a student, Shivraj’s approach to ‘Sarva Dharma Sambhav’ was, at best, ambiguous. He cut his political teeth in the RSS in mid-seventies. But those were the years of  soft-Hindutva  when  the underground RSS cadres were fighting  battle for the organisation’s existence  during the  Emergency. Shivraj as a student leader of Model high School in Bhopal was a small foot soldier of the RSS. As such, he went to jail for a while. When in Hamidia college,   he became an active member of  the ABVP, the student wing of the RSS. His skilful oratory earned him student union president ship. His leaning for Hindutva brought him closer to philosophy of Vivekanand.

 In fact, he passed MA in philosophy with gold medal. In those days, he hardly articulated level of tolerance to other religions. But, given his inclination to Vivekananda, it is tempting to assume that his vision was broader than typical RSS volunteer vis-a-vis other religions.  How this assumed broadness played itself out in Shivraj’s dealing with friends is uncertain. He was not known –is still not known —to keep very many friends.  If any of those friends were Christian or Muslim is anybody’s guess. In the subsequent years, especially after he became the chief minister, a large number of Shivraj’s old-time friends have “surfaced” but none of them is either Christian or Muslim.

As chief minister, Shivraj Singh had a tough time taming the extremist elements within and outside the BJP in initial years.  Hindu-Muslim riots in Indore, Rajgarh , Ujjain and several other places in his first innings posed formidable challenge to the chief minister. Frequent vandalism of VHP-Bajrang Dal activists across the state too would give sleepless night to him. Christians all over the state, particularly in tribal region of Dhar and Jhabua felt terrorised by constant bullying of lunatic right wing fringe. It was also the time when  Uma Bharti would pose frequent threats to avenge her humiliation by  toppling the Shivraj government. This troubling combination of threats afforded little time or courage to a  beleaguered Shivraj  to win over the minorities. It was only after he led the BJP to grand victory in the 2008 assembly elections that shivraj felt confident enough to assert his authority in the government. The tradition to celebrate festivals of all religions at the CM house began thereafter.  

    

Sadhna Singh ,a queen of controversies?

Sadhna Singh ,a queen of controversies?

There was nothing so sensational in the analytical piece in the Hindustan Times on chief minister Shivraj Singh’s wife except the headline. “ Queen of Controversies” was how the otherwise balanced analysis was titled.

The headline predictably rattled the Shivraj government. Never before the wife of the present chief minister- -or, for that matter , any MP chief minister in the past—was profiled with such a damning  headline in a newspaper. The analysis was , though, merely based on the Congress’s allegations about  Sadhna Singh  having wielded extra-constitutional powers in the CM secretariat in cahoot with a bunch of obsequious bureaucrats.

From former leader of opposition Ajay Singh to present MPCC spokesman KK Mishra, a score of Congress leaders have  raised the stink over the alleged involvement  of ‘the CM’s family” in corruption ranging from acquiring currency-counting machine to facilitating mining leases to chosen few , not to mention recommendations to the PEB mandarins for clearing undeserved candidates in exams and for government jobs.  

But the piece, nonetheless, badly upset the  Shivraj Singh’s media managers. Coming , as it did, in the midst of heavy onslaught against the chief minister for his role in the PEB scam, the report hit the beleaguered Chouhan where it  hurts most.

Accustomed to be molly-coddled by the media for all his omissions and commissions so far, the blow was all the more hurtful for Shivraj. What’s more, he couldn’t have imagined the paper’s this “audacity” even after he has sued Ajay Singh and KK Mishra  in a Bhopal court for “ unnecessarily dragging his wife’s name” in the scams.

 Embroiled in the multi-layered PEB scam, the chief minister is feeling the most intense heat from the opposition ever since he occupied the office eight years ago. It hasn’t helped that   he is perceived an LK Advani’s man and, therefore, an adversary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. All through  his smooth eight years of  ruling, the chief minister pilloried the ‘Congress ‘s obsession with Shivraj’. Now, to his dismay, the Congress is smirking  at the CM’s  predicament—the  queen of controversies at home, the super boss in New Delhi.  

Has time come for his nemesis to catch up with him?  Did he make a mistake in giving his wife too long a rope?  Who knows what’s troubling Shivraj’s mind  these days?

Sadhna Singh, the bespectacled and coy-looking wife of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, is undoubtedly the most visible in public of the spouses of all the successive Madhya Pradesh chief ministers since inception of the state in 1956.

In initial days of Chouhan’s chief ministership, people, or at least BJP workers, approved,  if not  enamored, of   the couple’s frequent outings at taxpayers’ money. If Barrack Obama is never shy of showing his spousal affection for adorable Michel  to the US citizens , why shouldn’t Shivraj  do the same ? The argument had its merit. For, neither was tainted by  charges of corruption. While Shivraj Singh was struggling to come to grip with the nitty- gritty of the administration, Sadhna Singh came across as a demure Bhartiya Naree following her husband as a shadow.

Since Sadhna Singh had carried out the customary wifely task of helping the politician husband  in electioneerings in Vidisha Lok Sabha seat—Shivraj was elected five times from here—the couple’s  exposure together in larger public domain after Chouhan’s  coronation as CM was deemed logical. At worst Shivraj could be accused of being an uxorious.

 His fondness for the wife was never a secret to his  friends  and close acolytes  ever since he married the girl from Gondia ( Maharashtra) in 1992. Before that he had won two elections-one for the assembly and other for the Lok Sabha. Moreover, he was passionately engaged in mass marriages of poor girls in his constituency, a passion that earned him nationwide praise when as the CM he transformed it into a popular Ladli laxmi scheme of the state government.

The mass marriage ceremonies would invariably witness the CM and  his wife together offering kanya dan of the poor girls. 

So, Sadhna Singh was no stranger to the electorate of her husband’s constituency. Soon after their marriage, she had started sharing public platforms with Shivraj. None suspected any ambition--political or otherwise—in her then. Even after Shivraj became chief minister, not many suspected that happy tide in the hubby’s fortune may have kindled proprietorial  ambition in the wife  to partake of heady  power.  

However, there were sceptics too even then who thought otherwise..Their scepticism stemmed from the fact that a sizeable section of the BJP was pitching for Sadhna Singh as her husband’s successor for Vidisha Lok Sabha seat, with or without tacit approval of the chief minister. The lobbying for Sadhna was occasioned by Shivraj vacating the Lok Sabha seat to enter the state assembly from Budni seat following his anointment as CM.

The CM did not categorically deny that his wife was interested in the contest till the party asked him to do so.  The Vidisha seat was given to Shivraj’s friend Rampal Singh who won. 

 In the 2009 Lok Sabha election too, speculation was rife that Sadhna Singh might be BJP candidate from Hoshangabad seat. The ’inner-party  surveys’  by  the  BJP workers overwhelmingly  favoured the CM’s wife  over any other candidate.  Neither the CM not Sadhna denied prospects of her candidacy. Again, the high command stepped in to deny Sadhna Singh ticket. Once again, in 2014, Sadhna Singh’s name came up for Vidisha by election, caused by Shivraj quitting the seat following his victory from traditional Budni seat.

It is in the realm of conjecture whether the couple was indeed keen on Sadhna Singh joining electoral politics. But the fact that she is vice president of the state unit of BJP woman wing clearly indicates she is not averse to active politics.

Herein lies a major difference between Sadhna Singh and wives of the past chief ministers of MP. Of course, many ex-CMs’ wives’ were politically-minded: they would  have say in the hubby’s  political decisions: some of them  would even send bureaucrats for personal errands, but would not be active in politics.

Old timers in media and government aver they never got to know wives of the ex-chief ministers, be he  Ravi Shankar Shukla, Kailash Nath Katju, Bhagwant Rao Mandloi, DP Mishra, PC Sethi, GN Singh, VK Sakhlecha, Kailash Joshi, Sundar Lal Patwa, Moti Lal Vora,Digvijay Singh.

 Late Shyama Chanrn Shukla’s   wife Padmini was, of course, quite articulate even in administrative and political matters. Allegations were also leveled against her of interfering in transfer-postings of bureaucrats. Her fondness for Maika  in Indore was well known. Quite a few opportunists had managed to leverage her Maika connections to get their  works done, it used to be alleged.

But redoubtable SC Shukla would not allow the wife freedom in the governance beyond a point. Shukla was said to have sent packing one Tiwari from the CM house when he learnt this man was playing as a conduit between Padmini Shukla and favour –seekers.

Arjun Singh’s wife Saroj Singh was known to be domineering but she too would exercise caution in meddling in the husband’s political-administrative affairs. She helped Arjun Singh a lot in burnishing  his political career through calls to  journalists, seeking favourable news items in papers about him. She also shared Arjun Singh’s penchant for  nepotism in equal measure but would refrain from ordering about the CM office for the purpose. She trusted her husband too well to leave her wish list with his bureaucrats.

Digvijay Singh’s wife Asha Singh was a dignity personified. All though Digvijay’s 10-year rule , she maintained a dignified distance from her husband’s functioning.

Uma Bharti, a spinster , was without the luxury of a husband but this reality did not prevent her critics from raising accusing finger at  her one-time mentor Govindacharya who would spend considerable time in the tumultuous eight months the  stormy petrel was in the CM house.

Babul al Gaur, a widower, made a glaring mistake of  appointing  his daughter-in-law Krishna Gaur as chairperson of the MP tourism corporation but  under pressure from the party reverted the decision a few days  later.

So, Sadhna Singh stands out as the queen who  has been embroiled in controversies.

Kasab Amitabh, Nida and Gyan Ranjan

I am trying to insinuate myself in the Amitabh-is-like-Azmal Kasab controversy triggered by noted poet Nida Fazli. I have at least four plausible reasons to do so. One, I have been close to writer-editor Gyanranjan   who was foolishly compared with Amitabh Bachchan by the editor of the literary magazine  Pakhi in its September issue ; two, I am huge fan, like millions of other Indians, of the Big B ; three, I have read enough of Nida Fazli to believe him that his write-up in the Pakhi was distorted and sensationalized  by the media; and four, I have not only completely read the Pakhi issue on Gyan Ranjan but also have written a blog on the writer  based on the magazine’s issue.  

Let me try and put the whole controversy in perspective. Pakhi editor Prem Bhardwaj in his long interview with Gyan Ranjan compared ( rather apologetically, saying he be forgiven for this) ) the latter with Amitabh Bachchan. The interviewer’s idea was to convey that Gyan Ranjan too was an angry young man of literature as Amitabh was on celluloid in the seventies. The comparison, of course, was odious.

Nida Fazli, a close friend of Gyan Ranjan, tried to stress this odiousness in his write-up in the magazine. Nida justifiably viewed the comparison as an insult of Gyan Ranjan. For, Gyan’s anguish was his own, Amitabh’s crafted and scripted.

Gyanranjan had accumulated the anger through honest observations of the societal decadence, Amitabh had only simulated the anger his writers ( Salim-Javed) had cozily imagined in the film scripts for him.

Gyanranjan does not betray a fascistic streak through his characters like Amitabh did in the films of that era.  man A littérateur, however bad, is not a puppet, unlike a film actor.

So, where was Nida wrong? He merely pointed out to the puppet-puppeteer interrelation vis-à-vis Amitabh-Salim-Javed and Azmal Kasab-Hafiz Sayeed binary. Maybe, the analogy was a bit shocking, given the status of the superstar and the notoriety of Azmal Kasab. But, his point was valid.

Now coming back to Gyan Ranjan and Amitabh Bachchan. If you leave aside the angry young man epithet, both had many things common too.

They belonged to Allahabad; both are Kayastha and both were sired by litterateur fathers.

However, while Dr Harivansh Ri Bachchan was close to Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru, Gyanji’s father Ram Nath Suman was a hardcore Gandhiite.

Sanjeev Majupuria RIP ( 1964--2013)

George Eliot famously wrote our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.

I can never forget Sanjeev Majupuria , so he will never be dead to me.

Barely 24 hours ago, I watched mournfully with hundreds of others Sanjeev’s mortal remains getting reduced to ashes at Bhadbhada crematorium in Bhopal. He had died the previously day due to multiple organ failures. What exactly caused the death of the 49-year-old zestful, if somewhat pudgy, man so suddenly in the BMHRC is still in the realm of conjecture.  

Memories of our 25-year-long friendship are still haunting me. All through the three-hour taxi ride from Bhopal to Indore today, I kept recalling the moments I shared with Sanjeev.  

We were not the best of friends but Sanju was someone whose friendship I will cherish forever, infrequency of our meetings, of late, notwithstanding. He had so many lovable qualities.

The most outstanding attribute in Sanju that his friends never ceased to admire was his absolute commitment to his mentor Dr Suresh Mehrotra.

In fact, the word mentor falls way short of defining their unshakable bonding. Dr Mehrotra was a lot more than just a mentor for my departed friend.  

We fathomed depth of his devotion to Dr Sahab in one of our drinking sessions ( we used to have such sessions frequently in mid nineties).

Some one among us made a not-so-charitable remark about Dr Mehrotra amid drunken frolicking. All of us took it as a passable banter in keeping with the mood of the party. Not Sanju though.

Not otherwise known for being sentimental , Sanjeev was in tears. All of a sudden he got up and moved out of the house. The suddenness took us by surprise. Before we could stop him he was gone.

The party went completely sour. Without saying a word to each other, we silently resolved then and there that no one will utter a word about Dr Mehrotra when Sanjeev is around. His sentiments for Dr Mehrotra must be respected at all costs. The unanimous resolve was never breached.

The sanctity of the resolve has genesis in our common deference to the emotional history of Sanjeev’s ties with Dr Mehrotra.

Sanjeev’s father , a DSP in MP police, had died quite young.

Sanju, a happy-go-lucky boy of Daly College Indore,  had no one in MP to look up to for guidance. Before he died, his father requested Dr Mehrotra, his friend, to look after Sanjeev as his ward and take him under the wings.

On that day, a new relationship was born. It stood solid through tests of turbulent times till, unfortunately, one of them was snatched away by the cold hands of death. When Sanjeev was declared dead on Wednesday evening by Dr Vashneya at the BMHRC, a completely devastated Dr Mehrotra was heard muttering why the God took away Sanju, why not him ?

“ I am living on borrowed time, on bonus”, Sanjay Sharma later quoted to me as Dr Sahab having remarked.     

Sanjeev was an inalienable part of Dr Mehrotra’s family. When they were in the Free Press, Dr Mehrotra was his boss too. The newspaper’s bureau office was in Dr Mehrotra’s bungalows in the 45-Bunglows in Bhopal.

For others working in the bureau such as Bharat Desai, Joseph John and Late Naser Kamaal, Dr Sahab was just the boss. For Sanju he was and remained later more than that.

Even after both quit the Free Press and the bureau was shifted to another location, their ties endured.

Interestingly, Bharat Desai had soured relation with Dr Sahab in the Free Press for some reasons but that did not affect Bharat’s friendship with Sanjeev. This speaks volume of maturity of the ties Sanjeev maintained with friends without letting his devotion to Dr Sahab diminish one bit.

Sanjeev not only revered Dr Sahab, he imbibed the latter’s journalistic practices too.

All the Dr Sahab’s contacts were Sanjeev’s too and he would zealously guard them.

Some of us were not exactly amused by their penchant to mollycoddle friends in bureaucracy and politics at the expense of  fairness in journalism but we could also not fail to notice that neither Dr Sahab nor Sanjeev milched the contacts to feather their own nests. Moreover, we also admired the fact that they abhorred flaunting the fabulous contacts.

We became friends when Sanju had just quit MP Chronicle and I had joined the paper. Before that we had had nodding acquaintance for five years.

The first step towards friendship was marked by a joke in the MP state assembly building (old Vidhan Sabha) in 1991.

Sanjeev had joined Pioneer then. I asked how it feels to work for a national newspaper after putting in so many years in regional papers ? He laughed his characteristic laugh and said he had worked in Telegraph ( Kolkata) before.

I was intrigued as to why he quit Telegraph, a rising paper under great editor MJ Akbar? He evaded a direct reply and , instead, cracked a joke which, I assumed, he must have shared with many before.

“It so happened”, Sanjeev started the joke in the assembly hall, “ that I ran into an old friend in the telegraph office where I had gone to file my story for the Telegraph”. The friend asked me where I was working.

“ In Telegraph”, Sanjeev recalled telling his friend.

The friend, Sanjeev went on, took some moments to frame his reply and remarked, “ Ye Bahut Badiya Kiya Tumne. Are Kanha Central Government Ki Noukari Aur Kanha Patrakarita?

Sanjeev was intrigued. “ I looked at the friend askance, not knowing what to say,” Sanjeev was warming up to his own joke now, unmindful of the sanctity of the assembly hall ( we were inside the house).

The friend repeated what he had said and as if to clear self doubt asked, didn’t you tell me you are now working in the Telegraph department?

“ I was dumbfounded. What to say,” Sanjeev laughed in anticipation of concluding the joke.

“The poor man thought I was working in the telegraph department and not the Telegraph , the paper. Obviously he did not know a paper of such a name existed”, Sanjeev remarked and looked at me for a while as if to assess if  I have found the answer to my question as to why he had quit the Telegraph and joined the MP Chronicle.   

Our Jabalpur journey to cover the earthquake in 1997 was another hilarious tragedy. Just imagine the predicament that we had a bottle of Whiskey but no place to empty it in our hungry stomach.

Senior journalist ND Sharma was also with us.

For years, Sanjeev would tauntingly call me Mr Guloua after the Whisky misadventure. Incidentally Guloua is a locality in the vicinity of my house in Jabalpur and was also the place where the impact of the quake was the severest.            

So many other memories are flooding my mind but I have to stop it here.

As I started off with George Eliot’s quote I will conclude this with the same--our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.