Nat-war goes on

REGIONAL ROUNDUP

Though not too many papers took a stand on the Natwar Singh suspension from the Congress party, or played up the BJP allegations that the Pathak panel did not really probe the preferential allotment of oil by the Saddam Hussein government, most carried it on their front pages for days. Much of this had to do with the intemperate language used by the former diplomat "" in north India, several Hindi papers had the same headline, "Manmohan is spineless, says Natwar". Some had it as the day's lead, some as the second or third.

In Chennai, Dinamalar carried a four-column report along with a photograph of Natwar Singh on the front page as well as a five-column report on the NDA boycotting the session and staging a protest against the Lok Sabha speaker, along with a photograph on one of its inside pages. The previous day's edition of the daily also carried a report on the alleged leak of the Pathak report rocking Parliament, along with Natwar Singh's photo on page one. The edition also carried a number of reports on comments from Sitaram Yechury, Arun Jaitley and Priyaranjan Das Munsi.

In the Kannada press, Vijaya Karnataka, the market leader, carried the news as the front page lead for two consecutive days. In its editorial, it made a mockery of the Congress party: "Historically, the Congress is known to sacrifice its leaders to save the party." The newspaper even carried a front-page cartoon accompanied by an analysis of the implications of the Pathak Committee report. Another daily, Kannada Prabha was critical of the Congress and Singh. "The former foreign minister's objective to move a privilege motion against the prime minister shows the state of affairs of Indian politics. The Congress should have suspended Singh when his name surfaced in the scam," the newspaper argued. Praja Vani, too, gave extensive coverage to the issue on the front page for almost a week.

In Mumbai, only Loksatta used this as the lead story of the day though it figured on the front pages of all Marathi papers. Among other prominent newspapers, Maharashtra Times has written one editorial and an analytical piece by their Delhi correspondent in his weekly column. In Andhra the issue got relegated to the inside pages due to the monsoon mayhem there.