The CM’s way

After the Congress claimed that some parts of India were shown as dotted areas on a map when an agreement between Gujarat and China was underway during the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping last week, the government went on overdrive to clarify the matter. Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth and NSA Ajit Doval went through a clarification the government issued. Though the government clarified there was no map in the signed MoUs between Gujarat and China, it said a map was shown at the time of press release intending to show the geographical location of the Chinese city Guangzhou along with some factual details. It was not purported to give any geographical details of the Indian territory and the map should not be treated as the approved political map of the country as the dotted areas are integral parts of India.

CLAIMING CREDIT

With Narendra Modi hogging all the limelight after successful Mars mission, an uneasy Congress Wednesday scrambled to claim the credit for it. After all, the mission began in 2013 when the UPA was in power. The party is also upset that Modi did not mention the contributions made by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the subsequent Congress prime ministers for the great strides made by India in the field of space after the independence, though he did mention Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in fact, sent a letter of appreciation to ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan in which she said the success of the mission was a magnificent vindication of the faith and hopes that Nehru, Indira Gandhi and “other prime ministers” had invested in space research. Interestingly, she did not mention Manmohan Singh under whose helm the mission began.

RAISED EYEBROWS

Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan gave two scheduled functions a miss Wednesday. One was the AIIMS annual day function and the other happened to be the release of a report by IDFC on universal health coverage. While the reason given was that he had gone to visit an ailing Arun Jaitley in hospital, the uncharacteristic absence led to speculation whether, in the wake of media reports about the role of a senior BJP leader in IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi being divested of AIIMS CVO charge, the usually savvy minister had skipped the functions. Later in the evening, the ministry issued a clarification about the CVO issue.