In the eye of the storm is the man who had been selected to take over as the RAW chief. We'll call him D. He was to take over on May 1, the day after his predecessor Arvind Dave's year-long extension of service ran out.

The Government, however, decided to give Dave another three-month extension. D has been forced to cool his heels, and what's worse, he in limbo - the Government appointed him an Officer on Special Duty as a prelude to his taking charge. The Government's official reason for the postponement of the change of guard? If a new government came into place, then it should have the choice of its own RAW chief.

Which is a lot of Gober on several counts. With polls slated to take place in September-October, Dave's three-month extension will lapse with things remaining unchanged. Furthermore, it is a strange thing to do for the Vajpayee administration, during its 13-day avatar in 1996, had made only one top-level appointment - that of the RAW chief (Ranjan Roy was the lucky guy).

More importantly, the post of Secretary (R) in the Cabinet Secretariat, as it's officially known, is so sensitive an appointment that it is treated more reverentially than the appointment of an armed forces chief - the process commences months in advance, and the Leader of Opposition is taken into confidence. Political considerations are kept aside, and the best candidate is carefully chosen for the job in an extremely hush-hush manner.

So why the hitch in D's taking over? Jaal has been told that it is actually the result of a sustained campaign by some long-time RAW officials, in particular one Mr J and one Mr N. Their grievance? That D had never served in the RAW before.

True. Only D had been in the domestic service, the Intelligence Bureau, for over three decades. And his claim to such a plum post? Only that he had ran India's Kashmir policy throughout the 1990s, gaining in time the respect of the Foreign Office, the Armed Forces, the Para-Military, the Home Ministry, the State adminstration, the RAW, and the political parties. Many who are in the know say he is the most knowledgeable man on Kashmir, Punjab, Pakistan and the USA in the Government of India.

More importantly, however, the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary, Brajesh Mishra, had been convinced that this was the man to clean up the RAW. Ever since it was carved out of the IB by Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1968 (she found that the IB had information on Pakistan's attack in 1965, but didn't have enough specialists to analyse the information in time), the RAW has had only one notable success. Since that time it has been sinking deeper and deeper in morass.

This was in part because while the IB strengthened its human intelligence, the RAW focussed on technical aspects. Furthermore, its lack of accountability, due to its high need for secrecy, made corruption and nepotism easy. In the 80s, it became known as the Relatives and Associates Wing, and even recently, a former CBI chief's son was hired in the service on ad-hoc basis despite having no known qualification at all.

The Government's attempts to streamline and make effective the RAW is resented by those who would have moved to the top had the organisation remained as it was. Mr J was shunted out and appointed the innocuous Secretary (Security). This did not stop him from prompting Mr N to send a 13-page letter to the Cabinet Secretary, complaining about D appointment. Rumours are that Mr J was behind an e-mail sent throughout the intelligence community making allegations about D.