When External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj came under fire for her personal intervention in getting travel documents for controversial cricket administrator Lalit Modi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned to home minister Rajnath Singh to help manage the crisis.
Even though the Prime Minister depends more on Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to deal with governmental issues, he called in Singh for two reasons. Sushma and Jaitley have had tense relationship ever since they were leaders of opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively from 2009 to 2014. Further, Jaitley's ministry was pursuing money laundering cases against Lalit Modi and the External Affairs minister didn't consult the Finance Ministry which is across the Rajpath from her office before her "humanitarian" help. Further, Arun Jaitley and Lalit Modi have been opponents in BCCI. Hence Narendra Modi needed a senior leader, since Sushma Swaraj might consider party president Amit Shah to be a junior lightweight.
Rajnath Singh, who has been party president has a good standing within the party and shares a rapport with Sushma. His mission was to help the beleaguered Sushma, who had thought she could silence her critics by Twitter messages. For the last five years, Sushma has adopted a no media policy. She does not give media interviews. She did not give any formal press conferences as opposition leader nor now, when she is a senior minister. She even claimed her distancing from media made her a successful minister. On the other hand Rajnath has political skills and doesn't mind many rounds of discussions. When veteran leader L K Advani in 2013 had resigned from all party posts accusing president Rajnath Singh of unacceptable style of functioning in nominating Narendra Modi as prime minister, Rajnath didn't show his anger. He visited Advani and requested RSS as well as close supporters of the former deputy prime minister like Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar to ensure the senior most leader took back his resignation. During election when Modi was in two minds over giving Lok Sabha ticket from Gandhinagar to Advani, Rajnath persuaded Modi to favour Advani. But as home minister, Rajnath hasn't got the prominence in the first year as Jaitley is perceived to be more powerful.
But Rajnath not only was given the task of ensuring Sushma got the party support. He managed to get an initially reluctant Jaitley to issue a statement in support of the external affairs minister. Rajnath invited both the colleagues to his office and ensured they smoked the peace pipe. Jaitley made his statement in Rajnath's presence, but after the finance minister extracted that he wouldn't be targeted by Sushma camp. The episode also showed that Amit Shah was out of his depth when dealing with the senior members of government.
Now it remains be seen how Rajnath and Jaitley handle serious differences on security issues between Home Ministry headed by Rajnath on one side and Jaitley led Information and Broadcasting Ministry. Also whether Rajnath would be entrusted with more trouble shooting assignments.
Tailpiece: BJP is unhappy with the critical programmes aired by Rajya Sabha television controlled by Vice President Hamid Ansari. But the leadership has not agreed to suggestions in asking for more say in the channel's programmes. The fear is that opposition will ask for its say in the way Lok Sabha channel is run by speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who is from BJP.