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Kalyan Singh reads the riot act to cabinet colleagues

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Having taken enough onslaught from allies, cabinet colleagues and even some of his party colleagues, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is now all set to strike back. 'Enough is enough' was the message sounded by him to all and sundry at an informal meeting that followed a cabinet meeting recently. And significantly, this has had its desired effect on many of all those who, until the other day, were willing to take him for a ride.

According to informed sources, Kalyan Singh made it a point to spell out his displeasure over the ongoing bickering within the BJP-led coalition in Uttar Pradesh. "I am not going to tolerate this anymore," he was understood to have told a few of those who had been giving out indirect threats to resign. And referring to certain news reports highlighting such threats by some of this cabinet colleagues, an angry chief minister went to the extent of saying, "I fail to understand why people have to give their resignations to the media; if they really mean it, they must hand over their resignation letters to me."

The UP chief minister had been drawing a lot of flak over various issues -- the foremost being the largesse doled out by him to a municipal ward represented by a woman whose proximity to him was blown out of proportion by his own colleagues in order to run him down. The matter provoked a political upheaval and brought Kalyan Singh at loggerheads with his own state party chief Raj Nath Singh, with whom he had enjoyed a close rapport until recently.

The only other issue that had led to dissension within the ruling coalition was what some of them described as "discriminatory allocation of portfolios" to his 95-member council of ministers. Thus, while most of the ministers had to remain content with innocuous portfolios, a handful were allowed to cling on to a couple of key portfolios. This was explained by a disgruntled minister who pointed out, "I have a portfolio which is so small that at the secretariat level it is looked after by two section officers; in fact the secretary of my department has a bigger charge than I have. While on the other hand there are ministers who have two principal secretaries under them."

But Kalyan Singh may not be solely responsible for this discrimination, as he had to give in before mounting pressure not to curtail the size of the portfolios of some of his "privileged" cabinet colleagues.

The chief minister told a party MLA, "Mind you, I am least attached to the chief minister's office and would be the last one to think twice before stepping down." He made it loud and clear that it was not he who would have to bother about his future. "I have some position in our gigantic party and would find no difficulty in finding another slot for myself, but many others would have to fend for themselves," he pointed out.

The CM did not hesitate to drop clear hints that in case he was driven against the wall, there would be little choice left but to face fresh elections. "If people are interested in elections, I don't mind at all; it will be a testing time for those who think no end of themselves right now," he remarked to another legislator.

For many of the legislators who went about seeking favours (for the umpteenth time) in the form of transfers and postings, pat came Kalyan's retort, "I think we have already done enough of transfers and postings; it's time we rose above this (often referred to as an 'industry' in UP) and got down to real business."

The message seems to have driven home his point that he would not take nonsense from any quarter and that time was ripe to take a plunge into attending to the neglected affairs of the state. And with that, it would now be the turn of UP's otherwise lethargic bureaucracy to pull up their socks or else face Kalyan Singh's ire.

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