Cell-shocked Speaker

What began as light-hearted banter between Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and BJP leader Pramod Mahajan took a serious turn in the Rajya Sabha today. With Mahajan wondering how the stock markets continued to rise in flood-hit Mumbai, Chidambaram shot back, ‘‘Mr Mahajan and his friends must be heavily investing in the stocks.’’ Mahajan was quick to retort, ‘‘I am not into investing. It’s the Finance Minister who has invested, many times wrongly, and it has even cost him his job once.’’

Nagpur ‘‘notice’’

The BJP had to contend with a fresh taunt from the treasury benches on the RSS-L.K. Advani face-off today. It happened when BJP deputy leader V.K. Malhotra got up to demand that the Government table the Nanavati Commission report and the Speaker refused to allow him to raise the matter, in the absence of a notice. And as the two argued, RJD member Devendra Prasad Yadav quipped: ‘‘You got a notice from Nagpur last month.’’

Humour of the day

As any discussion on Bihar usually spells bedlam for the Lok Sabha, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was on extra alert today when JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar raised the issue of law and order in his home state.

Each time Kumar looked at the RJD MPs, sitting on the opposite side, Chatterjee asked him not to get distracted and continue to address the chair. The Speaker, finally, got all the attention he wanted when he remarked, ‘‘Nitishji, aap chair ko dekhiye — utna achcha dekhne mein nahin hain, par phir bhi dekhiye. (Nitishji, please continue looking at the Chair — he’s not so good looking but still.)

Gag of the day

It could well have been a Freudian slip or a slip of tongue coming from a person who’s not well-versed in Hindi. CPM leader Basudeb Achariya, speaking on President’s rule in Bihar, today said his party was in favour of early polls in the state and formation of a ‘‘sampradayik sarkar’’ (communal government). What he must have meant was a ‘‘gair-sampradayik” (secular) government.