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Journalism of Courage
Last week, a Parliamentary committee visiting Tripura was in news over the alleged misbehaviour of the son of a leading state minister with a few members of the panel at a local five-star hotel. But the trip produced some memorable moments, too. In fact, the state government had organised a cultural event for the MPs at the same hotel. The event was attended by state ministers and senior BJP leaders, including Manik Saha, who went on to take oath as the new chief minister four days later. Saha, it is learnt, regaled the visiting MPs with Bengali songs. “Little did we know that a future CM was sitting in our midst,” quipped one MP.
Good Gesture: The Law Department of Kerala University has received a donation — a multi-volume treatise on the law of patents, which costs four times the department’s budget for books. “Chisum on Patents”, authored by Donald Chisum, is a 54-volume treatise first published in 1978, and costs more than $15,000 (approximately Rs 12 lakh). The donation came from Attorney General of India K K Venugopal. Venugopal also has a collection of rare books on a wide range of subjects — from religion and mythology to travel — that he digitised two years ago, granting access to everyone through a website.
Little Representation: While the Congress has criticised the NDA government at the Centre over the recent killings of Kashmiri Pandits by militants in the Valley, the party did not invite any Congress leader from the community to the Chitan Shivir in Udaipur. The only representatives from J&K were Tariq Hameed Karra, who is a permanent invitee to CWC, and state Congress president Ghulam Ahmed Mir. Ghulam Nabi Azad was present as a CWC member, and Vivek Tankha as a Rajya Sabha MP. One gets to hear that AICC in-charge of J&K, Rajni Patil, wanted to invite one Kashmiri Pandit leader and had forwarded the name of Deepika Singh Rajawat, who represented the victim’s family in Kathua rape case, but the proposal was not accepted. Rajawat recently joined the Congress.
