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RSS seeks to pluck Montek, N K Singh out of key economic posts

George Iype in New Delhi

Take 1: The Sangh Parivar's relations with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government at the Centre sour over the proposed Insurance Regulatory Authority Bill.

Take 2: scene itself changes -- the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh questions the credentials of some senior bureaucrats.

BJP sources said the RSS leadership has asked Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to shift senior bureaucrats like Montek Singh Ahluwalia and N K Singh from the Planning Commission and the Prime Minister's Office respectively to insignificant government posts.

Ahluwalia is currently a Planning Commission member.

Singh is a secretary in the PMO. Ahluwalia and Singh were finance secretary and revenue secretary respectively when the BJP coalition came to power nine months ago.

But owing to the pressure from the RSS leadership and the BJP's economic wing, Vajpayee had shifted the senior bureaucrats to the present posts.

However, the RSS leadership is reportedly disturbed that both Ahluwalia and Singh call the shots in the government especially in framing key economic policies and taking foreign investment decisions.

Recently, the prime minister set up a task force for employment generation under Ahluwalia's chairmanship. The 14-member task force came into force as per Vajpayee's declaration last month that the government would provide job opportunities to 100 million people in the next ten years.

But two senior RSS leaders -- Dattopant Thengdi and Mahesh Sharma -- who have been inducted as members in the task force, have refused to take up their assignments. The reason: they do not want to be part of a task force headed by Ahluwalia.

Thengdi, who spearheads the Sangh Parivar's swadeshi campaign against the Vajpayee government, recently wrote to the prime minister stating that he cannot participate in any meeting on employment generation because Ahluwalia heads the task force.

Alleging that Ahluwalia is "a person who has never lived in a village nor knows anything about the problems faced by the people residing in the villages," Thengdi has questioned as to why the prime minister has appointed him chairman of the task force.

"It shows the government's seriousness in tackling the problem of employment generation," he said in his letter to the PM.

Mahesh Sharma, who is the Khadi and Village Industries Commission chairman, has informed Vajpayee of his "inability" to be part of the task force.

A BJP official said RSS joint general secretary K S Sudershan met Vajpayee last week and requested him to remove Ahluwalia as task force chairman as well as member of the Planning Commission.

The RSS brass is unhappy with N K Singh who, as secretary in the PMO, is in charge of coordination between various government departments on crucial economic policies and decisions.

Both Ahluwalia and Singh are members of the prime minister's 10-member Economic Advisory Council. Others in the Council include economists like former RBI governor Dr I G Patel, Professor P N Dhar, Dr Kirit Parekh, Dr Amresh Baghchi, Dr Ashok Desai and G V Ramakrishna, chairman of the Divestment Commission.

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