For all the Africa summit hoopla, the second day of the summit saw only two cabinet ministers—Shivraj Patil and A K Antony—attending it. The reserved front benches were deserted with the telling story of empty chairs with nameplates on them: P Chidambaram, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Yadav, Jaipal Reddy and a dozen others. Ironically, the MEA mandarins probably overlooked one thing: they had reserved a chair for Dasari Narayan Rao; he had been dropped from the ministry a couple of days back.
