The Patel who came in from the cold

One cannot but admire the guts, spunk and mugsy of Kiran Bhai Patel. And wearing a bandhgala, dark glasses and a look that could cook a RAW agent, Kiranbhai certainly looked the part – the part of an additional director for strategy and campaigns in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) – or, at any rate, what most of us think an additional director for strategy and campaigns in the PMO looks like. Except, he wasn’t. Turns out, the self-described ‘thinker, strategist, analyst and campaign manager’ had made two visits to Srinagar posing as the high-ranking GoI official, even holding a series of meetings with officials earlier this year. After keeping his arrest under wraps earlier this month, the news of Patel’s audacious forays came out after a magistrate sent him to judicial custody for his con job.

It is fortunate – certainly for Patel, and perhaps for Jammu and Kashmir, if not for GoI’s reputation for being able to tell the real thing from a con – that Patel’s name turned out to be Patel. Perhaps all that our hero wanted was to have a taste of ‘serving India’, even if his services were not wanted. That’s the ‘trouble’ with patriotism – it can lead to some extreme, not-quite-legal action. For which we salute Kiranji.