The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government is now facing internal tussles, planting stories against each other, and murky double agents derailing many sensitive probes that happened during the UPA-2 regime. These king-size egos and dubious activities of certain people are literally collapsing the governance of the Narendra Modi-led Government. A re-run of UPA-2 is going on now. Home Minister P Chidambaram and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee were fighting openly and their officers fought bitterly too. This time the same is being done by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who with his team of journalists and officers is daily targeting Railways & Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

These bitter internal fights weaken the Government’s defence in Rafale deal allegations, which are being raked up daily by the main opposition party Congress. It is the talk of town and has the potential to damage the Modi Government’s image but no one seems to be interested in salvaging its reputation (similar to what happened with UPA2). Arun Jaitley is busy with his agenda in petty matters of transfers and postings, and planting stories in media against colleagues like Piyush Goyal, Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has created a lot of mess in several agencies including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). P K Mishra, Additional Principal Secretary in PMO, who is in charge of top-level appointments and postings has poisoned the working environment in many organisations and created tussles between many department heads due to his interventions in posting his boys and girls everywhere. P K Mishra and his trusted disciple Rajeev Topno, who is holding the post of Private Secretary to Prime Minister, are the main culprits in the chaos in the CBI. Mishra wanted to discredit CBI Director Alok Verma for probing his protegé, the corrupt Rakesh Asthana as the next CBI Chief.

P K Mishra (PK), a Gujarat cadre retired IAS officer, was a close confidant of Sharad Pawar and served with him in Agriculture Ministry for seven years and was his Agriculture Secretary when Pawar was the Agriculture Minister. PK also has a good rapport with Ahmed Patel, who was controlling affairs till May 2014. It is a million dollar question as to how P K Mishra landed the No. 2 spot in Narendra Modi’s PMO. Similar is the career graph of Rajeev Topno. This young Gujarat cadre IAS officer was in Manmohan Singh’s PMO from 2009 to 2014 as Director. P K Mishra accommodated his disciple Rajeev Topno in Narendra Modi’s PMO too, that too as Private Secretary.

It is a known secret that PK intervenes into many cases in CBI and propped up Asthana against Alok Verma, who objected to many designs of PK in posting of officers in the agency. Even senior IPS officers who worked in the Special Protection Group (SPG) handling Sonia Gandhi’s security during UPA were pushed to be appointed as Joint Directors of CBI, which was rejected by Alok Verma. Rakesh Asthana openly boasts about his closeness with P K Mishra. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) proposals are pending for months but corrupt Asthana’s proposal is issued at midnight by Mishra. He went out of the way to help the just-retired Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra who also hails from his home state of Orissa. Mishra is now desperate to make Dipak Misra as Chairman, Law Commission or a Governor. Agencies are fighting in the same way when Rajender Kumar of Intelligence Bureau was to be charge-sheeted by the CBI during UPA Government in Ishrat Jehan encounter case.

Mishra also has the habit of planting stories in newspapers. It is a known secret that Odisha based reporters in Times of India and Economic Times enjoy the patronage of Mishra, who loves to plant stories against opponents.

Targeting of officers like Alok Verma who charges sheeted P Chidambaram and his son Karti is another example of Government’s vendetta against officers doing their work. Like UPA2, which had corrupt Ahmed Patel and P Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh’s Principal Secretaries Pulok Chatterjee and T K A Nair, which led to the Congress getting 44 seats, NDA Government’s top functionaries are also creating such chaos. These people (Chatterjee and Nair) never let intelligent people join the system and only went for “loyalists“, who were, in fact, a “liability“ for the government and led to the demise of UPA 2.

PM Modi must control Arun Jaitley by telling him to focus on the economy and jobs rather than manipulating statistics and getting legal retainerships for his children. His daughter Sonali Jaitley’s law firm has received legal retainership from fugitive Mehul Choksi. PGurus recently asked questions to Jaitley in this regard[1].

The Prime Minister has to rein in his PMO officials and they should be sternly told to keep away from the politics of appointing officers and should immediately bring in a Finance Secretary who knows Finance and Economics. The current Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia is busy writing letters proposing self extension of service and looking for a job in the Election Commission and the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) while claiming that he wants to go for a spiritual tour but his mind is occupied in petty issues all the time and the country has suffered as a result and so has this govt.’s image. In the UPA Government during Pranab Mukherjee’s days, his trusted aide Omita Paul ran the Finance Ministry without knowing anything of finance and created a mess. A similar situation is now created by Hasmukh Adhia and the economy is in shambles.

P K Mishra is in touch with opposition parties through Sharad Pawar and Ahmed Patel. Rajiv Topno is now being seen with Rahul Gandhi’s aides. Topno was earlier in touch with the tainted, now jailed Editor–cum-Fixer Upendra Rai. Another senior officer in the PMO, Bhaskar Khulbe is seen meeting with Prashant Bhushan to avoid Public Interest Litigation against him in the coal scam. Hasmukh Adhia has openly started criticising the Government in front of reporters saying that he does not have a free hand! Ahmed Patel is telling many journalists to avoid negative reports against Adhia and Asthana. He is desperate to have this duo in place otherwise the Sandesara case will ultimately lead to him and his family. Ahmed Patel has even assured Asthana of support by the leader of opposition in the CBI Director selection meeting. It is a wakeup call for you, Mr. Prime Minister. Perform or you are in danger of perishing.

References:

[1] Did Arun Jaitley accept Legal Retainership Fee from Anil Ambani’s firms? Would that be a conflict of interest? Sep 24, 2018, PGurus.com