Patil changes shirts as capital suffers

NEW DELHI: Nero was fiddling while Rome was burning. When the Delhi serial blast victims were fighting for their lives in hospitals, Union home minister Shivraj Patil was busy changing shirts.

Between 6.30 and 8.30 pm on Saturday, the dapper Patil changed his shirt three times during the course of his visits to the blast sites and hospitals. But the aam admi and the political class are not amused.

On Sunday, several SMSes were doing the rounds over Patil’s fetish for shiny white shoes, pocket combs, and frequent changes of clothes during office hours.

One received by a colleague read: “Shivraj Patil on the warpath after Delhi blasts...enough is enough…fires personal assistant for misplacing his white shoes and comb”.  

Though Patil is the blue-eyed boy of 10 Janpath, even sections of Congressmen and UPA allies like the RJD, NCP and Lok Janashakti Party now feel it is time the home minister is replaced. Privately, senior UPA and Congress leaders use words like “inept, out of his depth” to describe him, and Saturday was certainly not the first instance when his cabinet colleagues have questioned his handling of the situation.

Senior UPA sources have told DNA that Lalu Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, and even ministers belonging to his own party like AR Antulay have questioned his handling of the blasts, the Kashmir crisis and the violence in Orissa.

Under pressure from the NDA for being soft on terror, senior Congress leaders fear Patil’s stewardship of the home ministry might cost them dearly at the time of the elections. Several UPA leaders are also reported to have impressed upon UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi that Patil has overstayed his welcome in the ministry, yet neither the prime minister nor Sonia Gandhi have so far done anything about it. “Yeh hum sabko ley dube ga,” (He will take all of us down with him) says a senior UPA leader and Union minister.

However parties like the BJP and the CPI(M) are, however, not asking for his Patil’s scalp even after 10 major blasts in the last four years. Not because they love him more, but because they love others less.

A CPI(M) source said: “We don’t want the attention to be diverted by seeking the home minister’s resignation. That’s not going to help. The government must strengthen the system.” The party sought an explanation from the Centre as to “why the intelligence and the security set-up have failed to identify and dismantle the terrorist groups”.

The BJP’s gamelan is bigger — targeting prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and holding them responsible for the “collapse of the internal security” apparatus.