Baba vs son

Congress MP Jagdambika Pal had his most hectic day. Rahul Gandhi had scheduled his visit to Pals constituency Dumariyaganj

Written by Express News Service

November 26, 2011 02:20 AM IST

4 min read

Congress MP Jagdambika Pal had his most hectic day on Thursday. Rahul Gandhi had scheduled his visit to Pals constituency Dumariyaganj for Thursday,which also happened to be the day he was hosting the wedding reception for his son in Delhi. Clearly,Gandhis UP campaign team had missed this fact while drawing up the plan. In true Congress culture,Pal too did not seem to have registered much of a protest. As a result,it was a race against time for Pal,who was in his constituency to attend to Rahul during the day and back in Delhi to play host for his sons reception in the night.

Media Scrutiny

The Union Cabinet on Thursday witnessed a clamour for regulation of the media,especially the electronic media,with ministers going to the extent of suggesting that Intelligence Bureau should be asked to look into the records of journalists. The focus was on the leakage of Cabinet meeting deliberations. One of the ministers was learnt to have even demanded that the CBI should be asked to inquire into the leakage of Cabinet notes. What can we do? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was said to have remarked to ministers. Disclaimer: This newspaper also based its report on FDI in retail on the Cabinet note circulated a day before the meeting

Retail Resonance

There was reason why Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma came down hard on Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Dinesh Trivedi during Thursdays Cabinet discussion on FDI in multi-brand retail. Sharma had flown down to Kolkata before circulating the Cabinet note to specially brief Mamata Banerjee. In fact,he is believed to have even reached an understanding with the West Bengal Chief Minister. So when Trivedi passionately opposed the Bill,Sharma simply cut him short by saying that states which did not favour the proposal,were free to not implement it. Incidentally,it now emerges that there was no opposition from the DMK in the Cabinet.

Two of a kind

The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj celebrated her first Twitter birthday on Friday,having taken to the 140-character format exactly this day a year ago. An active twitterbug,Swaraj has kept her followers abreast by twitting about party meetings and views on various issues. Her colleague,Arun Jaitley,Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha,though,is just the other extreme. He not only abhors the social media,he has even filed a police case against an unknown person who has impersonated him on twitter. The latest is that a letter rogatory has now been issued by a Delhi court to establish the address of the fake account holder from Twitter in the United States so that his identity can be established.

Bills to Pay

After having ensured Cabinet clearance for the crucial Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Bill,which had been hanging fire for some time,Mines Secretary Subrahmanyam Vijay Kumar has been handpicked to steer another tricky Bill the Land Acquisition,Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill. Kumar has been shifted as Secretary,Department of Land Resources,where his primary job would be to pilot this politically sensitive Bill,one which Rahul Gandhi wants cleared at the earliest. Meanwhile,former Indian Airlines CMD and Financial Advisor in Home Ministry Vishwapati Trivedi has moved to the Mines Ministry.

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Delhi Confidential