Delhi Confidential: Cambridge Rule

Senior Advocate Rajeev Dhavan often reminisces about his Cambridge connection while arguing his case. On Wednesday, when Senior Advocate Rakesh Dwivedi sought to intervene in the middle of his submissions in the case concerning the minority status of Aligarh Muslim University before the seven-judge Supreme Court bench, Dhavan said: “My Lord, when I was president of the Cambridge Union, we followed the rules of Parliament, that if somebody gets up, I accept his intervention or don’t accept his intervention. I do not accept that intervention, My Lord…”

Poll Jitters

The Interim Budget and Ram Temple may be dominating the public conversations of BJP ministers and MPs but, in private, they are discussing only one issue — whether they would get the ticket to contest election. For ministers who are Rajya Sabha members, the dilemma is whether they should contest the Lok Sabha election or not. With 28 BJP MPs retiring this April from the Upper House, most of them are nervous. Party sources said any information about the candidates for the February 27 Rajya Sabha election would be out closer to February 15, the last day of the nomination.

Win-win Video

The Samajwadi Party (SP) last month announced that it will give Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) seven of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Both the parties have so far maintained secrecy on these seven seats but the RLD on Thursday posted a video on its social media handle, claiming that it will register a record victory from the Muzaffarnagar seat (which it had lost in 2019). The move is being seen by the leaders of Congress — the third partner in the INDIA bloc in UP — as a tactic to claim the seat. However, a party leader said the video was of a local who believed that RLD can win the seat.