[cr-india] PROFILE: S Jaipal Reddy -- new I&B minister

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

New Kerala .Com :: World / India / Kerala News Channel
India News <http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/>*

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May 22, 2004 

* India News > Jaipal Reddy: after talk, time for action*

New Delhi, May 22 (IANS) :

Most quotable politician, walking dictionary, and phrasemonger -- 
Congress spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy has invited many nicknames, not all of 
them complimentary.

But Reddy's word factory never ceases to produce new specimens, which he
drops in parliament with utmost glee on shouting rivals.

The 58-year-old's return to the central government as a minister could 
blunt the razor sharp wit that silences rivals. That famous sneer is bound 
to become defensive and subdued.

The affable spokesman was information and broadcasting minister in his 
last government job in 1997-98 under prime minister I.K. Gujral.

Though the stint was short-lived, Reddy tried to resurrect the national
broadcasters and grant autonomy to state-owned television and radio.

Besides his biggest quality of articulately speaking for the party - be 
it any group -- Reddy has informally won the crown for the most 
imaginative use of the English language.

No wonder Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj accused him of
memorising "1,000 insults" and "1,000 more insults" by heart.

They may lampoon him and criticise him, but the ever-grinning Reddy has
always taken it sportingly.

He has been able to fox journalists even while answering the toughest of
questions.

Reddy started his political career in the Congress and came to head the
youth wing in Andhra Pradesh in the late 1960s.

He rejoined Congress in 1999, but he has over the years been the 
spokesman of the Janata Dal, the United Front government as well as the 
Third Front combine.

His move to join the Congress, his former party, surprised many who had 
seen him as the party's bitterest critic after the emergency regime of 
1975-77 imposed by then prime minister Indira Gandhi.

But Reddy says he has always been a Congressman at heart.

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