Delhi Confidential: Witty side

Recall Value

You do not often see ministers recalling TV serials on a public platform and even commending it. Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar did precisely that at the National Media Centre where he held a press conference on online forest clearances. The minister while talking about how the new online process will end red tape recalled the popular TV series Office Office. Javadekar pointed out how the lead character, Pankaj Kapur, was popular because people faced such situations. He assured that his ministry will now ease all bureaucratic bottlenecks by going online.

House Lexicon

In Rajya Sabha Tuesday, when Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar described the TRAI amendment bill as “nonsense”, there were protests from the treasury benches about the word being unparliamentary. Deputy chairman P J Kurien consulted the rulebook and ruled that the word is allowed but the expression “bloody nonsense” is unparliamentary.

Campaign Ranking

He may be the biggest crowd-puller among BJP leaders today, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi figures on No. 3 in the list of the BJP’s star campaigners for the forthcoming byelections to the Uttarakhand Assembly. His name is behind party patriarch L K Advani and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. Modi’s Cabinet colleagues External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Finance and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley find their names on the fourth and fifth slots, respectively. Incidentally, BJP president Amit Shah’s name is the 12th in the list.

Exit Bite

Rahul Gandhi usually breezes in and out of Parliament, but it was different Tuesday. The Congress vice-president usually uses Gate No. 4 to enter and exit Parliament. On Tuesday, he came out of the main gate only to find that his cavalcade was not there. Without waiting, he started walking towards Gate No. 4, while his security personnel scampered to get the vehicle. The confusion helped the media personnel who managed to extract the ‘Vaidik is an RSS man’ bite from him.