Plan B for Priyanka
On 10 March, we in this column had disclosed that Priyanka Vadra, Congress general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, would not contest the election from anywhere. When Congress released its first list of 15 Lok Sabha candidates, which included the names of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the high command as part of an unnecessary strategy had maintained a studded silence since then on whether the family’s third member Priyanka would be fielded. On the basis of highly placed Congress sources, we on 10 March revealed that Priyanka would not jump into the election arena this time and that besides campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, she would help her mother in Rae Bareli and brother Rahul in Amethi.
It now seems that there is a “Plan B” for Priyanka. The Congress leaders are privately accepting that Rahul Gandhi may lose in Amethi. But if he wins in Amethi, he will prefer to retain his Wayanad seat. In that scenario, Priyanka may be fielded in the Amethi bypoll. If Rahul loses in Amethi but the Congress fares well overall in the country, Priyanka may get elected from a safe constituency.
Now we know…
In this column on 31 March we had reported that, in a lighter vein, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi at a function at AIIMS in March had said that “judges and doctors are vulnerable”. As this item had appeared much before a dismissed Supreme Court woman employee’s recent alleged charge against the CJI of sexual harassment, many judges and lawyers and politicians are talking about it. “Now we know why the CJI made this remark in public…obviously, he was aware of what was going to hit him,” a noted Delhi lawyer told The Sunday Guardian. The woman, who has made the allegations, was dismissed in December.
Pragya fake Sadhvi: Baghel
In Jabalpur on Thursday, the Congress’ Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel claimed that “Pragya is a fake sadhvi”. He charged that the BJP’s candidate for the Bhopal seat was not becoming of a “sadhvi (ascetic or holy woman)”. “Pragya Thakur has a connection with Chhattisgarh. Her brother-in-law worked at a warehouse in Bilaigarh (in Balodabazar district),” Baghel said, adding that “she used to carry a knife and had stabbed a young man named Shailendra Devagan in the chest in Bilaigarh in 2001.”
“Pragya also used to indulge in fights, and from the beginning her conduct was like that of a habitual criminal and not like that of a Sadhvi,” the CM said.
Questions about ground handling at airports
A recent ground handling tender for 34-odd Airports Authority of India-controlled airports has given rise to questions. Once the tender bids are finalised and awarded, some fly-by-night ground handlers may get free access to airports. Talking to The Sunday Guardian, Tirthankar Ghosh, a top aviation expert, said that the goings-on in the tender process have become the subject of a whistle-blower’s letter to the vigilance authorities. Ghosh, managing editor of an aviation magazine said, “We carried out two investigations in February and March on the manner in which the tender was conducted. We discovered how officials responsible for the conduct of the tender process did not just stop short of issuing repeated corrigenda to change the parameters of the tenders to enable ineligible entities—and some with questionable tie-ups—to qualify for the tender process, but also bent rules. This was done to accommodate the favoured few participants. The officers concerned, for reasons best known to them, went out of their way to welcome entities with questionable security clearances.”
As per the Ground Handling Regulations 2017, international airlines are not allowed to carry out their own ground handling beyond the check-in area. “The AAI officers responsible for the due diligence of ground handling bidders, allowed some whose security certificate had been rejected or not submitted,” Ghosh said. “Why does AAI want to play with passengers’ lives?”