Capital Buzz/Virendra Kapoor

Woman trouble for Delhi cops

Remember Kiran Bedi? The country's first woman Indian Police Service officer who became a celebrity playing to the gallery? Well, the lady has resurfaced. And, with her usual penchant for thumbing nose at her superiors while courting her political masters, she sure looks headed for trouble.

Bedi, who had been lying pretty low since her Tihar jail days (she was the inspector general there), had been recently appointed by Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna as one of his advisers. And senior Delhi police officers were irked no end. Never had a Lt Governor, they say, thought it necessary to appoint a serving police officer as part of his inner council. Now, with her unannounced visits to police stations and calls for the odd-official-on-leave at the oddest of hours, Bedi is making herself much more unpopular than she ever was.

But what has really put police officers's backs up is Bedi's move to have a mini secretariat of her own. She is reportedly drafting more than a dozen cops to her control room which, among other things, would monitor the functioning of the local police.

Ostensibly meant to be the Lt Governor's eyes and ears in the Delhi administration, Bedi, many (especially police officers!) fear, would end up glorifying herself by painting everyone else a lesser being. And that, they allege, is what she is up to now.

Resign if you want, but don't ask me to!

Congress president Sitaram Kesri is a genius at getting rid of his opponents. Look what happened with Bombay Committee boss Murli Deora.

When Deora handed in his resignation, owning moral responsibility for his party's humiliating defeat in last month's municipal election by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine, Kesri was most angry. "What does he mean by resigning on moral grounds for the party's defeat in Bombay? We have lost everywhere. Does he expect me to resign for the party's defeat in Delhi, Punjab etc? " he huffed. And promptly accepted Deora's resignation.

Small wonder, considering that there wasn't much love lost between the two.

A Nehru in trouble

Central Bureau of Investigation Director Joginder Singh is keeping his fingers crossed. That Arun Nehru, former union minister and faithful Congressman, currently on 'holiday' in New York after his name was linked to the Bofors investigation, doesn't return soon. For, then 'Tiger' Singh can fly for yet another junk-cum-photo opportunity, can't he?

And Nehru, a distant cousin of the late Rajiv Gandhi, is showing every sign of obliging 'Tiger'. And why not, the climate is much healthier in the Big Apple than it is in Delhi, is it not?

Nehru, we hear, has also been taken off the list of columnists by a major newspaper which once prided itself on its efforts in unraveling the Bofors mystery.

Tytler in the hot seat

Former Union minister Jagdish Tytler is again in the news. And as usual, it is for the wrong reasons.

An anonymous pamphlet doing the rounds in the capital lists several alleged Tytler-ian scams. The dossier has an authentic ring about and, besides some of his properties in the capital, lists a few of the ex-minister's various accomplices. Thus, a couple of bureaucrats find a not-too-honourable mention in the pamphlet. The only journalist who figures as a 'crony- cum-business partner' in the two-page pamphlet in English, is a senior magazine editor who allegedly owns a food processing business.

Tytler's allies suspect the pamphlet is the handiwork of a woman politician whom he is said to have spurned recently in favour of a younger politico who was recently elected to the Delhi Municipal Corporation on a Congress ticket.

The scapegoat Tiger

We now return to CBI chief Joginder Singh and his Bofors troubles.

Following the premature release of Ottavio Quattorocchi's name to the media, Singh had been well and truly ticked off by Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda. In reality, Deve Gowda himself was responsible for sanctioning the leak.

Singh, sources say, had bravely resisted all attempts by the media to worm the names out of him. But, Deve Gowda, after his pow-wow with Congress president Sitaram Kesri at an iftar party, ordered Singh to let out the names! This, sources claim, was at Kesri's insistence.

And when the Opposition pointed out the inconsistency in releasing the names (Win Chadha's was the other name), but withholding the papers, on the ground that the Swiss wanted it strictly used only for criminal prosecution, Deve Gowda conveniently forgot about this!