It was a show of strength at a function hosted by MoS (Home) Kiren Rijiju at his 9, Krishna Menon Marg residence to mark the 29th Arunachal Statehood Day function. Several officials from paramilitary forces were deployed at the venue and several police vans were also pressed into service. The notable guests were MoS (I&B) Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Rijiju’s colleague in Home Ministry Haribhai Parthibhai Chowdhury. Just for fun Now that the political drama in Bihar is over, at least for the time being, BJP leaders are trying to pretend that they thoroughly enjoyed the episode. When pointed out that BJP’s attempt to back Jitan Ram Manjhi had back-fired, and it could lead to a situation where the party’s tally in the assembly elections this year could be halved, a controversial Union minister from Bihar said, “Half ya saaf. We had fun. We enjoyed the fighting between Manjhi and Nitish Kumar.” A wait too long A BJP leader from Lucknow had a taste of Delhi politics when he tried to have an appointment with party chief Amit Shah. The leader came to the party headquarters and handed over his visiting card to the attendant at Shah’s office in 11 Ashoka Road. He was asked to be seated at the waiting room. After waiting for 45 minutes or so, the impatient leader inquired whether the attendant had sent his visiting card inside. An amused attendant pointed to two MPs who had also been sitting there for almost three hours, and asked him to be patient. But the miffed leader took back his visiting card and walked out. War games Seems the Coast Guard hasn’t had enough of videos and counter videos regarding its Pakistan boat episode. Last week, when the agency was in the midst of a storm over the comments made by its DIG B K Loshali, the Coast Guard promised to release a video of the burning boat to prove a point that the boat blew itself up. However, there was a surprise in store. The zip file sent by the Coast Guard contained an animation of the hare and the tortoise race instead of the burning boat. TV-effect A Supreme Court bench hearing a plea to initiate a probe against former CBI director Ranjit Sinha witnessed some heated arguments on Monday. Advocate Prashant Bhushan read out from his note, alleging Sinha had sought to interfere with the probe into coal block allocation case and it required a thorough investigation. CBI’s counsel Amarendra Sharan, however, protested and intervened while Bhushan made this argument. At this, Justice Madan B Lokur quipped: “TV debates have created bit of a problem for us as well. Nobody lets anybody complete his sentence.”
