Word: desai
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...more bluntly, many's the politician who lusts for Prime Minister Lai Bahadur Shastri's job. Among the splittists: left-leaning ex-Defense Minister Krishna Menon; sloe-eyed Indira Gandhi (Nehru's daughter), Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (Nehru's sister), and former Finance Minister Morarji Desai, 69, who was Shastri's chief rival for the prime ministry. Last week at Bangalore, Desai made his play...
Such a move would, of course, torpedo Desai's chances over the next two years, and he promptly attacked it as "a negation of democracy." The impact of his charge was quickly dissipated: as Desai ended his speech before the hushed house, the chair ruthlessly adjourned for lunch. A few hours later, Kamaraj was reinstated as Congress president...
...Turn. With Nehru gone, the gaze of India and the world turned to his successor. Flying back to New Delhi from Allahabad, Shastri was officially installed as Prime Minister and turned vigorously to the tasks before him. A conciliator by nature, he hoped to bring his principal rival, Morarji Desai, into his new Cabinet. Spare, ascetic ex-Finance Minister Desai demanded that he be given a post that would, in effect, make him deputy prime minister and No. 2 man in India. When Shastri countered with the offer of the No. 3 position in the Cabinet, just under that...
Despite all of India's gigantic problems, Shastri seems to be off to a fair start. His opponents in the Congress Party, ranging from Morarji Desai on the right to Krishna Menon on the left, are likely to give him several months' grace before they start rocking the boat. And after 17 years of Nehru's aristocratic rule, the mass of the Indian people appear to regard Shastri as representing a return to the homey, close-to-the-soil leadership of Gandhi...
...office Shastri would immediately have to start thinking about the hard business of running a government. As he huddled with advisers on the makeup of his new Cabinet, it seemed likely that the Foreign Ministry might go to Indira Gandhi, while the defeated Desai was almost certain to be offered a portfolio, even if not the top one he demands. Another likely minister: S. K. Patil...