Delhi Confidential: Amit Shah looks east

Union Home Minister Amit Shah may visit Tripura next week to interact with members of the Bru community, displaced from neighbouring Mizoram over two decades ago and settled in various parts of the state in camps. Many of those families are now being rehabilitated in pockets of Tripura, which has earmarked land for them as part of a four-way agreement involving the Centre, state governments of Tripura, Mizoram and leaders of the Bru community. The Tripura administration has started making arrangements for Shah’s visit, which was scheduled much before the outbreak of violence in Manipur. It remains to be seen if Shah also holds a meeting with the TIPRA Motha leadership during his visit over its demand to appoint an interlocutor to examine the Greater Tipraland issue.

Namaste Pakistan

As External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar welcomed his Pakistani counterpart Bilawal Bhutto Zardari with a ‘namaste’ and not a handshake, the latter said that Jaishankar did not differentiate between foreign ministers and treated all of them in the same way. The Pakistan foreign minister also said that in Pakistan, too, in some places, people do greet with a ‘namaste’ and it was not a slight. He said that they did shake hands and exchanged pleasantries at dinner on Thursday.