Senior DMK leader T.R. Baalu who has been sulking for long on being denied a ministerial berth at the Centre now has his hopes revived. Now that Pranab Mukherjee has been elevated to the Presidency, a cabinet re-shuffle is inevitable.

Though there is a stiff competition in the DMK for ministerial berths, which has two vacancies in its kitty, Baalu is confident that he would not be ignored this time both by his party leadership and the Congress. As he has been the main interlocutor between his party and the Congress, he feels he has a strong claim to a cabinet portfolio. Therefore, to be on the right side, party insiders say that he is all the time in a hurry to please the powers that be. They point to Baalu’s eagerness to congratulate Pranab and honour him with a shawl on UPA’s declaration that he would be the coalition’s candidate for Raisina Hills. The second incident they refer to is when Pranab was declared the winner of the Presidential contest. He rushed into Pranab’s residence to once again honour with him a shawl. Party people feel that he has already laid the groundwork subtly to stake his claim for a ministerial assignment.

Looking for investigators
Everybody, who is anybody anywhere in the country, begins demanding a CBI inquiry into any criminal or corruption case. Their plea is that they don’t have faith in the state government. Or, in other cases, they feel that the CBI would be able to investigate the case in a much efficient manner. But the problem with the CBI is that it cannot keep on taking up cases at a time when there is a huge dearth of investigators within the country’s premier investigating agency. Left with not much choice, the CBI has now begun asking the state governments to provide investigators from their pool to the agency if they want to get the cases probed by it. “It has become a practice now to refer cases to the CBI. But nobody (in the government) is willing to listen to the agency’s persistent demand of filling up several vacant posts of investigators in the agency,” said a CBI official.

UPA now faces power of Pawar
Post Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, the ruling alliance is now faced with another concern in the form of the NCP chief and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. Even though there is now truce between the allies, Mr Pawar has now begun showing his clout. While Union minister of state for consumer affairs K.V. Thomas was slated to announce a slew of measures to check price rise, Mr Pawar intervened to stop him from taking any unilateral measure. Mr Pawar would rather take any decision through the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), which he heads, on such issues. This has left Mr Thomas sulking, as he has no answer to Mr Pawar’s clout.

In the race for FM post
Now that Pranab Mukherjee has finally reached the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the race for the next Finance Minister is gaining momentum. Seve-ral names are doing the rounds for Pranab da’s office in North Block. It is a fairly well-known secret that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh relies a lot of Montek Singh Ahluwalia and C. Rangarajan for inputs on critical economic economic issues. Fearing that either Mr Ahluwalia or Mr Rangarajan may be elevated as the FM a section of senior Congress leaders who too are in the race have now been sending feelers to 10 Janpath arguing why it was critical to make only a political person the Finance Minister. But if the gossip in Congress circles is any indication to go by the squabbling may result in Dr Singh himself managing the finance portfolio for the time being.

Publicly censured, yet popular
The infighting in the Kerala unit of the CPI (M) is continuing to cause considerable embarrassment for the party after its veteran leader V.S. Achuthanandan had to be “publicly censured’’ by the party’s central committee recently. Incidentally, this is the sixth time that disciplinary action has been taken against him, with the first one way back in 1966. Party sources said that the state committee, led by Pinarayi Vijayan had recommended removal of the veteran leader from the party’s central committee and the post of the leader of opposition. But Mr Achuthanandan’s clean image and popularity once again saved him from strict action. Notably, while censuring Achuthanandan, the Central Commi-ttee also directed the state leadership to take apt action against M.M. Mani, former district secretary of Idukki unit who boasted in a public speech that party had “meticulously engineered serial murders of political rivals in the district”. It was now being feared in the party circles that this may well not be the last time that Mr Achuthanandan has caused embarrassment to the party — by not only refusing to toe the party line but also giving ammunition to the Opposition UDF to target the CPI(M)!