Aditi Phadnis: The link between 10, Janpath and the PMO

BACKSTAGE

You can't just walk into his room "" you have to seek an appointment first. He's not the kind of IAS officer who will entertain you, wine you and dine you with a view to how he might be able to use you.

Equally, he is not a colourless bureaucrat of the variety that believes the worst thing to happen to India was a free press. Newly appointed Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Pulak Chatterjee is a man who believes that right is right and wrong is wrong but will not yell from the rooftops that those are his views.

Perhaps because he is not madly ambitious and is content to let opportunities come his way instead of chasing them, Chatterjee's career has been unspectacular.

An Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS officer of the 1974 batch, he was district magistrate of Sultanpur and collector in Rai Bareilly, and more recently, additional resident commissioner in the UP government, executive director of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh (1999-2000) and from 2000, secretary to the leader of Opposition, Sonia Gandhi. Before that, from 1993 to 1998, he was posted in the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF).

Each officer in the RGF was handpicked for the job, whether it was Wajahat Habibullah or Pulak Chatterjee. The RGF was Sonia's obsession and the constant reminder of her vulnerability and widowhood. Chatterjee took over the running of the RGF from Habibullah and was succeeded by Shekhar Raha.

Ideas for fund-raising came from him although in the prevailing atmosphere of the early 1990s, people donated money lavishly for anything associated with the RGF. But you needed to put administrative systems in place to ensure the foundation worked. Chatterjee helped to do this.

Devoted though he might have been to the Gandhi family, the Indian steel frame made demands on him that would not be denied. Which is why he briefly went to the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh after which Sonia sought out his services again after she became leader of the Opposition.

Few know the role Chatterjee played in drafting the hundreds of letters that Sonia wrote to the government and the prime minister during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, reminding them of their duties as government, and the amount of work Chatterjee did to follow these up.

In many ways, the bricks and mortar of Sonia's leadership of the Opposition was provided by Chatterjee, whether it was suggestions on the running of cooperatives or the rehabilitation of riot victims.

He was politely unyielding before hectoring by Congressmen and yet knew Sonia's mind well enough to know whom she should meet and when. So, although he held one of the most powerful jobs in the Opposition, he never caused a controversy or put anyone off because he was always unfailingly polite.

But the next few years are likely to prove most testing for Chatterjee. His inclination probably will be to stay with Sonia. But he doesn't have a choice in the matter. He has held the job for four years and must now be posted out. He could have gone back to the UP government.

The next best is the PMO because that's the only place where all posting rules stand superseded. It goes without saying that he will be the single most important link in the communication between the PMO and 10, Janpath.

But as someone so closely identified with Sonia, Chatterjee will now report to a new boss. How will he see his role? More importantly, how will Sonia see his role? And will someone else replace him now that Sonia will have both Cabinet rank and an important part to play in Parliament?

For a low-profile bureaucrat like Chatterjee, his new posting will be a crown of thorns. But being the kind of bureaucrat he is, Chatterjee is likely to approach it with the same equanimity he has brought to his earlier jobs.