The rift between the old guard and the relatively younger lot of the Delhi Congress leadership was on display at a luncheon organised for the press last week.
While the latter posed for pictures and gladly gave sound bytes, the former sat huddled at a single table near the entrance of the makeshift tenement while lunch was under way.
The senior leaders, including Jagdish Tytler, Subhash Chopra, Barkha Singh, Kiran Walia and Mahabal Mishra, confined themselves to a group, nodding to the younger crowd now and then. Pradesh Congress Committee president Arvinder Singh, and leaders Haroon Yusuf, Asif Mohammed Iqbal, Ragini Nayak and Amrita Dhawan were spotted exchanging quick pleasantries with them, but that was the extent of the interaction between the groups.
While former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was later ascertained to have given the event a miss in order to be part of a ceremony organised to ring in the new leadership of Indian Youth Congress, her comments about the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) being a “natural ally” of the Congress in Delhi seemed to have furthered the distance between the factions.
The Delhi Congress leaders chose to dismiss her comments quietly as “personal view” and responded by calling the AAP party “a failed experiment”.
Ever since he took over as Delhi Lieutenant-Governor about 18 months ago, Najeeb Jung held his first interaction with journalists, mostly those covering the Delhi Government and politics.
However, the high tea hosted by Mr. Jung in the sprawling lawns of the Raj Niwas on Friday left several journalists disappointed. This so because they could not use the rare opportunity to stumble on new stories despite the presence of a battery of senior-most Delhi government officials, including Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi.
While Mr. Bassi was seen interacting freely with some journalists, the other officials went into a huddle. Even during the limited interaction, they were keener on reminding journalists about the breakfast spread rather than discussing issues related to their Departments!
The Delhi High Court Bar Association has called upon judges to maintain high standards of judicial propriety by avoiding situations in which they continue to function in the same court where their kin are engaged in legal practice.
The association welcomed the decision of Justice Ashutosh Kumar to seek a transfer from the Patna High Court to Delhi recently on account of his family members practising in the same court. Justice Kumar was sworn in as Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court last week, taking up the strength of judges in the Court to 41. He was appointed in the Patna High Court on May 15, 2014.
Association president Rajiv Khosla said it was one of those rare occasions when a judge himself sought transfer on this ground to send across the message that a judge’s relatives should not get undue favour from his elevation in the same High Court.
“The Bar is not able to understand why the same policy is not adopted uniformly in all High Courts at the time of appointments,” Mr. Khosla added.
He regretted that the transfer policy adopted earlier by the Supreme Court, aimed at minimising favouritism and nepotism, had been discontinued. Mr. Khosla said “privileged persons” get special favours in the shape of retainership, appearances, panel membership, assignments, etc., giving a boost to their practice in a short of span of time.
By Jatin Anand, Vishal Kant & Mohammed Iqbal
