Query after a sigh

There was a collective sigh of relief that former Andhra Chief Minister M N Janardhan Reddy survived a Naxalite attempt to assassinate him on Friday. His car was third in the convoy and the landmine went off just as the fourth car passed over it, killing two accompanying Congress workers. While all and sundry spoke about how fortunate Reddy was, top security officials in Delhi were in a tizzy about something quite different. In standard convoy protocol, the car behind the VIP with Z-scale security should have been that of the police escort. It was not the case in Nellore district that day. Neither the dead nor the injured were security personnel. The lapse in the convoy set-up is now a subject of a specific inquiry from Delhi.