Dilli Gupshup: Gossip from the Dilli Durbar

The Congress is on a search spree these days.

All this, and more, in this week's Dilli Gupshup...

If one went by what a section of the Congress party is saying, the answer would be a resounding yes.

These Congressmen have already begun a low intensity campaign to ensure that the next President is a Brahmin.

These Congress leaders point out that no Brahmin has been Rashtrapati since Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma (July 25, 1992 to July 25, 1997).

Errr... How exactly is that relevant?

Votaries of this campaign claim that such an appointment will restore the people's confidence in parliamentary democracy.

Reallyyy??? Is that all it will take?

We will be kind and assume the fact that Congress netas Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Congress party Treasurer Motilal Vora are Brahmins has nothing to do with this brilliant analysis.

Politicians can't resist the pull of Bollywood and neither, it seems, can Bollywood resist the pull of politics.

The general election is presumably two years away, yet several actors are already vying for tickets.

Actress Nagma, who wants to contest from Qaisargun, Uttar Pradesh, is knocking at the Congress's door.

Uttar Pradesh, strangely enough, seems to be the popular destination for filmwallahs-turned-politicians.

Actress Jaya Prada, who currently represents Rampur (in Uttar Pradesh), plans to shift to Azamgarh, the hometown of her political mentor Amar Singh.

Actor Raza Murad wants the Samajwadi Party or the Congress to field him from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.

Filmmaker Muzzafar Ali wants to try his luck from Lucknow.

Actors Manoj Tiwari and Ashutosh Rana and singers Malini Awasti, Tripti Shakya and Shyam Sunder Chauhan are some of the other aspirants.

Here are a couple of questions for you...

1. Do filmwallahs make good politicians? (Please click here to post your comments and read what other people are saying.)

2. Would you vote for any or all of the people mentioned here? (Please click here to post your comments and read what other people are saying.)

Poor Amarinder Singh!

The former Maharaja of Patiala can't figure out why he is being held responsible for the Congress's defeat in the Punjab assembly polls.

What upsets Captain Singh even more is the fact that his party colleagues from Uttar Pradesh -- the assembly election there took place at the same time as the Punjab polls, resulted in a stunning debacle for the Congress -- have virtually gone scot-free.

The maharaja checked with fellow aristocrat (though the Congress general secretary is not in the same league as the blue ribbon Patiala royal) Digvijay Singh, who only smiled in reply.

The captain doesn't seem to have received any answers from Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma or Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal either.

Only Amarinder's friend, Salman Khurshid, attempted a reply.

According to Khurshid, the fault lay in Amarinder's unfortunate karma -- only if Rahul Gandhi had chosen Punjab as his battleground, Amarinder would have been a happier man today.

We can vouch for the fact that Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh is an extremely generous host.

When BJP patriarch L K Advani visited Raipur recently, Dr Singh invited him home for a meal.

Advani was full of praise for the home-cooked delicious meal.

Proud pa-in-law promptly gave credit where it was due -- he had asked his daughter-in-law to cook the meal.

A gleeful Dr Singh told his daughter-in-law, "Bahurani, aap first class first se pass ho gayi."

Ever since Abhishek Manu Singhvi dropped out, the Congress has been looking for a new Spokesperson.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, who would like the job, has been ruled out on account of his frankness.

Leading the race for Spokesperson are Kerala's P C Chacko, who runs a tight ship whenever he substitutes for the Lok Sabha Speaker, and Mumbai's Gurudas Kamat, who resigned from the Union council of ministers because he was apparently dissatisfied with the sanitation portfolio he was assigned.

Also in the fray is another Mumbai MP, former Shiv Sainik and Bigg Boss 2010 contestant Sanjay Nirupam.

Nirupam, who has been seen gupshupping in recent days with Rahul Gandhi, may not make it, since senior Congress leaders feel the sensitive job of Spokesperson should be given to 'institutional' Congressmen and not outsiders like Renuka Chowdhury, Rashid Alvi or Nirupam who have come from the Telugu Desam Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Shiv Sena respectively.

Both Rashid and Renuka, incidentally, are currently on the panel of Congress spokespersons.

Supreme Court judge Dalveer Bhandari's overwhelming victory in the election by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council to serve as a member of the International Court of Justice at the Hague has cheered India's legal fraternity.

Justice Bhandari has been busy attending farewell parties these days, where he invariably gets suggestions to brush up his cycling skills.

Apparently, most ICJ judges at the Hague travel to work on bicycles.