Ruffling Feathers

While Azad beat a hasty retreat, the party has resumed the exercise to identify the two constituencies in Delhi for the primaries.

In his zeal to carry out Rahul Gandhi’s experiment to hold US style primaries to select candidates in 16 Lok Sabha constituencies, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is in charge of this exercise, ruffled quite a few feathers in his party as he hastily included the constituencies of Kapil Sibal and Krishna Tirath for the experiment and also put it on the party website. Azad may have misjudged the clout of these leaders though, as, within hours, the party high command intervened and the two MPs were conveyed that their constituencies were not part of it.

While Azad beat a hasty retreat, the party has resumed the exercise to identify the two constituencies in Delhi for the primaries. Given the perception that the party may not be inclined to rub heavyweights like Ajay Maken and Sandeep Dikshit the wrong way, three other sitting party MPs in Delhi are having anxious moments — J P Agarwal, Ramesh Kumar and Mahabal Mishra. Questions are now being raised abou

HELPING HAND
At the beating retreat ceremony, Isher Judge Ahluwalia was sitting in the front row along with her husband Montek Singh Ahluwalia when she noticed that while Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had found a chair in the front row, his wife Sunita was seated behind him in the sceond row. Isher Ahluwalia was quick to get up and get a chair for Sunita in the front row.

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DELEGATION OF POWER
With elections approaching and party work mounting, Defence Minister A K Antony is a busy man. Besides managing the complex ministry, he is a confidant of the Congress high command and has always maintained a fine balance on dedicating time to both tasks. However, now he is increasingly giving the responsibility of official functions to his junior minister, Jitendra Singh. One of the things that has fallen into the responsibility of the junior minister is the distribution of Republic Day parade awards on Friday. While in the past, Antony gave away the awards and met the media after the function, Singh has been deputed for the task this time around.

ESCALATING PROTEST
Civil Services aspirants opposing changes in the UPSC exam format have taken their fight to Rahul Gandhi’s doorsteps. Last month, they had protested outside Parliament and got an interview with Rahul who assured them that he would look into it. On Thursday, they protested right outside his 12, Tughlaq Lane residence. Rahul, it is learnt, met them for 15 minutes and told them that he was ‘one of them and one with them’ and would ensure that ‘justice’ is done to them within a week or so. The aspiring civil servants are, however, keeping their options open. They have said that if Rahul does not find a quick solution, they will launch a massive protest on February 6 across universities and colleges.

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