Savoury delights from southern India — idli, vada, sambar and chutney — are back on high tea menu at the Vice-President’s residence. On Tuesday, Vice-President C P Radhakrishnan held his first official interaction with the floor leaders of Rajya Sabha at his residence. The guests were served south Indian dishes along with north Indian snacks during high tea. South Indian dishes used to be the highlight of the menu served during events hosted by former V-P M Venkaiah Naidu. Naidu’s successor Jagdeep Dhankhar, who hailed from Rajasthan, treated his guests to mostly north Indian spreads during his term. Now house staff of Radhakrishnan, who hails from Coimbatore, have ensured a delightful mix of north and south Indian snacks for the guests. State Honour Former Union Law Minister and Senior Advocate Ashwani Kumar has been invited by French President Emmanuel Macron as a guest to the Pantheonisation ceremony on October 9 of Robert Badinter, a distinguished French jurist who died in 2024. Pantheonisation is a high state honour of interring the remains of distinguished French citizens at the Panthéon in Paris. Kumar, as an MP, was the president of the Indo-French Parliamentary Friendship Group. He recalled how he and Badinter had often discussed the abolition of capital punishment for which he was a “relentless crusader.” Book Challenge ADDRESSING AN event on Tuesday at IIC to launch a book, Above and Beyond, by CISF DIG Shiv Kumar Mohanka, former civil aviation minister and BJP leader Syed Shahnawaz Husain left the audience in splits with his self-deprecating humour. He said unlike many speakers before him, he hadn’t read the Mohanka’s book and whenever the latter asked him to, he had argued if he were so interested in studying he wouldn’t have chosen politics as his career. Civil Aviation Minister K Ramamohan Naidu, who was the chief guest, later advised Mohanka to release the audio version of the book in Hussain’s voice to get his attention.
