If you played cricket as a child in the lane in front your house or the colony park, you certainly remember that amusing rule: if the bat, ball and wickets belong to me, you better not question me; or the game is off. I am going home, see you tomorrow mate.

That’s a rule not exactly endorsed by the rulebook of the Wisden Cricketers Almanack, or even the Indian cricket board, which itself isn’t exactly averse to changing the rules to suit itself. But, what the heck, that’s my rule; so take it or leave it!

The power ministry, powered by the uber-classy Jyotiraditya Scindia, seems to buy that logic, though. If you ain’t from my party, go get an award somewhere else. Match over here, he seems to say.

According to a report in Wednesday’s Economic Times (read here), the minister cancelled an award to felicitate top-ranking power-distributing companies after it emerged that four of the top 10 utilities came from Gujarat, a state administered by his party’s bête noire, Narendra Modi. More amusing, Scindia did not even mention names of the top performers, the report says.

The incident reiterates not just the UPA government’s discomfiture with all things Modi but the overall unease with all things non-Congress. And like the crass and crude zamindar, the only way it knows to show that is by shutting out the uncomfortable Other — either call it names to defame and humiliate the opposing voice or forcing the lid down to make it fade from public memory.

For the former, just jog your memory back a little and recall a slightly less refined home minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s rebuttal to the youth protesting against government nonchalance in the aftermath of Delhi gangrape (“...tomorrow Maoists will come here to demonstrate with weapons”) or a little-more-glib-tongued-but-perennially-at-a-loss-to-figure-out-how-to-use-it Salman Khurshid’s counter to Arvind Kejriwal’s allegation that his family trust had misappropriated funds meant for the disabled ("I have been made the law minister and asked to work with the pen. I will work with the pen but also with blood").

Or recall the secrecy with which the December 16 Delhi gangrape victim was flown off to Singapore when the heat of the protests got to the UPA, and the equal mystery with which her body was flown back post-death and the last rites performed at the crack of dawn. Like the prime minister’s stoned silence on all things concerning his government, it is an effort to erase the issue from public memory.

Scindia, too, seems to have taken the latter route: ignore the achievement, and the feat will stop being a feat. At least in public imagination. Like Shinde had said not long ago, like Bofors, the people will forget the coal block allocation scam as well. And like that streetside cricket rule: never mind the rules, just set them if you own the gear.