Delhi Confidential: Poll Priority

BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh is likely to accompany president Nitin Nabin on a visit to Uttar Pradesh in the first week of July. This will be Nabin’s first trip to UP after organisational ranks in the state were overhauled last week. Some insiders link the trip to election preparations in the poll-bound state, while others say Santhosh’s presence underlines a crucial development — the final vetting of “loyal hands” from the state for the BJP’s national hierarchy.

Notable Departure

The Rashtriya Lok Dal’s reconstituted 19-member parliamentary board has an interesting hierarchy. The board, reconstituted on Tuesday and tasked with scrutinising ticket aspirants and recommending candidates, will be headed by former Rajya Sabha MP K C Tyagi, the veteran JD(U) leader who joined the RLD barely three months ago. Party president and Union Minister Jayant Chaudhary, meanwhile, figures as just another member of the board. Generally, the parliamentary board is chaired by the party president, making the RLD’s arrangement a notable departure. Besides organisational functionaries and old party hands, the board also includes representatives from different sections and a few eminent citizens.

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Pancake Comparison

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw found an unusual way to explain the complexity of a multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) while speaking at the foundation stone-laying ceremony for a PCB manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh recently. Highlighting India’s push to reduce dependence on China in the sector, Vaishnaw likened a 20-layer PCB to “a 20-storey building compressed into the size of a roti or a pancake”, and a 14-layer PCB to “a 14-storey building compressed into the size of a papad”. The comparison left the audience amused, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who shared the dais, breaking into laughter.