Bjp Flays Prabhat Kumar For Letter To Minister

In the standoff between urban development minister Ram Jethmalani and cabinet secretary Prabhat Kumar, the BJP has decided to support Jethmalani, although the party holds that he too should have acted more responsibly.

The members of the party's intellectual cell, which met on Wednesday, strongly criticised the cabinet secretary for writing to a minister in such a fashion. Some retired senior IAS officers are among the cell's members. They felt that this was not correct protocol. The BJP, which is peeved at some other officials' hostility towards the Vajpayee government, has apparently taken the opportunity to signal that they could not take ministers for granted.

 

Kumar wrote to Jethmalani on Tuesday asking him to restore full powers to Kiran Agarwal as secretary in the ministry. The minister had earlier divested Agarwal of all powers following differences between them over certain issues.

The cell has backed Jethmalani's contention in his letter to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee yesterday that Kumar had no right to issue a direction to him.

Only the Prime Minister or a cabinet colleague could do so, he held. The cell's sentiment is likely to be conveyed to Vajpayee by party vice-president Jana Krishnamurthy, who presided over the meeting.

Some BJP leaders claimed that Kumar had exceeded his brief in writing to Jethmalani. Vajpayee would not ask Kumar to write to a senior cabinet minister in such a fashion, one of them contended. Kumar had tried to help his colleague in order to demonstrate the bureaucracy power within the government, he alleged.

These leaders, however, also blame Jethmalani for joining issue with his secretary.

They are peeved that the government submitted a faulty affidavit before the Supreme Court on M K Bezboruah's transfer from the Enforcement directorate.

The officials responsible for that affidavit did not include certain clauses even after the Prime Minister had agreed to the BJP's suggestion that they be included, a BJP office-bearer said.