Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Mishra to quit Mayawati cabinet, will be back in Rajya Sabha
28 Jun, 2007 LUCKNOW: BSP supremo and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Wednesday announced that her trusted lieutenant and Brahmin mascot of the party Satish Chandra Mishra will quit her cabinet in two months and will return to the Rajya Sabha. The buzz in Lucknow is that Mishra might eventually be inducted into the Union council of ministers as a trade-off with the Congress for BSP’s support to UPA’s presidential candidate Pratibha Patil in the event of BSP formally joining UPA.
Mishra was instrumental in wooing Brahmin votes for BSP that helped Mayawati dislodge Mulayam Singh Yadav in the assembly polls. Mishra is facing a controversy over his relatives being accommodated in important posts in Mayawati's Government.
Overall we now have the situation that Pratibha Patil's support cannot improve the image of leftist parties at least for now.
Left parties have, justifiably, prided themselves on two attributes: probity in public life and a secular, modern outlook that takes a particularly dim view of public religiosity. It cannot then be a very comfortable experience for these stalwarts to be confronted with growing evidence that the UPA’s presidential candidate appears to fail the test on both counts. As if Pratibha Patil’s opinion on Mughal rulers and veiled women was not bad enough, now come stories of dodgy banks, dodgy loans and dodgier relatives. There are even ghosts riding the swirling dust of the presidential election process: Pratibha Patil’s reported conversation with her long dead guru during a visit to the Brahma Kumari sect at Mount Abu. Also, with Thackeray as an apparent ally, the left may have a lot to think about.
Revelations that a co-operative bank set up by Pratibha Patil in Maharashtra was delicensed because of financial irregularities has put the Congress on the backfoot.
Mishra was instrumental in wooing Brahmin votes for BSP that helped Mayawati dislodge Mulayam Singh Yadav in the assembly polls. Mishra is facing a controversy over his relatives being accommodated in important posts in Mayawati's Government.
Overall we now have the situation that Pratibha Patil's support cannot improve the image of leftist parties at least for now.
Left parties have, justifiably, prided themselves on two attributes: probity in public life and a secular, modern outlook that takes a particularly dim view of public religiosity. It cannot then be a very comfortable experience for these stalwarts to be confronted with growing evidence that the UPA’s presidential candidate appears to fail the test on both counts. As if Pratibha Patil’s opinion on Mughal rulers and veiled women was not bad enough, now come stories of dodgy banks, dodgy loans and dodgier relatives. There are even ghosts riding the swirling dust of the presidential election process: Pratibha Patil’s reported conversation with her long dead guru during a visit to the Brahma Kumari sect at Mount Abu. Also, with Thackeray as an apparent ally, the left may have a lot to think about.
Revelations that a co-operative bank set up by Pratibha Patil in Maharashtra was delicensed because of financial irregularities has put the Congress on the backfoot.
# posted by uv : 8:44 PM
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