"The impact on Indian-Pakistani relations will be very bad, " says Australian academic William Maley, a South Asia expert.

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He quit in 1996 to start fixing four decades of bad management at the franchise--all of it largely the work of his father, William V.

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Cabinet Office minister Ian McCartney said it was symptomatic of "William Hague's weak leadership and bad judgement and his hokey-cokey over Steven Norris shows just why the public don't trust them".

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