Suitable candidate

It left a few foreign nationals, who recognised the CBI director, looking on with an exclamatory smile.

While the BJP is hoping to reverse the trend of the 2009 elections when Congress got an upper hand in major urban Lok Sabha constituencies across the country, the saffron party is finding it difficult to find suitable candidates for its quota of three Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai. Most curious case is that of Mumbai North Central constituency, which is represented by Congress’s Priya Dutt.

The BJP is learnt to be against fielding previous candidate Mahesh Jethmalani from here. Top state leaders were learnt to have touched base with a clutch of film stars, including Nana Patekar, to contest against Priya Dutt. However, all of them were learnt to have turned down the request, citing Bollywood roots of Dutt’s family.

TRENDING NOW
Union minister in the NDA government and veteran journalist Arun Shourie started trending on social media Wednesday thanks to a lecture he delivered two years ago. Someone chopped out a two-minute clip from his hour-long lecture on “Public discourse in India today and what can we do about it” delivered at a forum in Hyderabad in 2012, because in that part he is seen mimicking, in good humour, Times Now editor Arnab Goswami to make a point on how vain TV debates are.

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Showing his humourous side, Shourie is seen making up an instance of the studio catching fire and Arnab conducting a TV debate between the arsenist and the fire fighter. The audience is in splits as Shourie goes on to aggressively ask the imaginary arsonist why he set fire to the studio. The arsonist apparently answers that it was the firefighter’s fault and then Arnab demands an explanation from the fighter because the “nation wants to know”.

CONSPIRACY ANGLE
Even as senior Punjab Congress leaders want former chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh to contest the coming Lok Sabha elections from Bhatinda against sitting MP and SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal’s wife Harsimrat Kaur, the Maharaja is not ready to bite the bullet.

Claiming that the proposal is a “conspiracy” by state Congress chief Pratap Singh Bajwa to get him out of state politics, Capt is now strongly backing the candidature of former state finance minister Surinder Singla for the seat. Incidentally, in the 2009 LS elections, Capt’s son Raninder lost to Harsimrat by a margin of over 1.20 lakh.

NO SPECIAL TREATMENT
CBI Director Ranjit Sinha had to go through physical security checking at the entrance as he arrived to attend a wedding in Delhi. The security at ITC Maurya did not insist on checking other recognised guests but Sinha who arrived in a private vehicle walked past the metal detector and volunteered to be checked.

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It left a few foreign nationals, who recognised the CBI director, looking on with an exclamatory smile.

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