Baalu plays the perfect second fiddle to Lalu

NEW DELHI: T R Baalu seems to have perfected the art. In days gone by, the DMK minister used to sit next to the late Murasoli Maran, faithfully
collecting pages of his speech one by one as they were read out. On Friday, he did the same, though in reverse order, for Lalu Prasad as the RJD leader read out the railway budget.

During Lalu's relatively short 45-minute speech, Baalu handed over single sheets as the railway minister read out the interim budget. It looked like a well-oiled performance with Lalu simply holding a hand out as he reached the end of a page. Appreciative of help rendered, Lalu was quick to compliment "Baaluji" prompting the DMK leader to look a bit sheepish.

There were few Lalu witticisms and the budget was quite drab business. But in a poll season there were a few telling cues here and there. If Lalu bent over to be polite to the Left, raising a few laughs as he did so, his ministerial colleague from Bihar, Ramvilas Paswan, was not amused. A stern Paswan did not applaud or thump his desk even once, indicating Lalu's recent charm offensive had yet to yield results.

If Paswan's icy mien indicated Lalu would have his hands full in keeping UPA united in Bihar, the sparse attendance in the House seemed proof that MPs were pretty much in an electoral frame of mind. The ministerial rows were thinly populated as well, with home minister P Chidambaram strolling in late. So did foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee but he was probably busy giving final touches to his statement on Pakistan's action in the 26/11 attacks.

Lalu made it a point to at least twice underline a request from leader of Opposition L K Advani that he had accommodated, a clearly deliberate reference perhaps intended to rub in NDA enforced occupation of the Opposition benches. To other MPs who rose to complain about their cases not being considered, Lalu was quite expansive, waving his arms, his spectacles gleaming in the light of powerful bulbs, promising redressal if they wrote to him.

Interestingly, Congress's youth brigade, alongwith its leader Rahul Gandhi, was missing in action too. Apart from Navin Jindal and Sandeep Dikshit the rest of the young set were busy elsewhere. Others like the canny NCP chief Sharad Pawar, in the limelight for his renewed hobnobbing with Shiv Sena and usually a regular on the front row, was also missing. In fact even the visitors galleries looked deserted.

There weren't many interruptions and it was left to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to remark in jest that the railway minister had been paying close attention to UPA chairman Sonia Gandhi's constituency. Sonia quickly shook her head but apart from the coach factory at Rae Bareli, it was evident from the easy manner in which she chatted with the RJD boss before his speech that Lalu's equation with 10, Janpath is firmly in place.

Source : Times of India