Fears allayed

The core group meetings are normally chaired by Sonia Gandhi.

Fears allayed

The formation of the four-member committee to look after party affairs in the absence of the ailing Congress president Sonia Gandhi has become the starting point for recent discussions on the changing power equations in the party. Talk of further weakening of the Prime Minister was,however,put to rest over the weekend when Manmohan Singh chaired the core group of the party. The core group meetings are normally chaired by Sonia Gandhi.

Fit to Fight

OVERBURDENED with a plethora of high-profile cases,CBI officials have now reasons to cheer as the agency has set up a gymnasium at its headquarters. The gym is believed to be in sync with the state-of-art building the CBI recently moved in to at Lodhi Road. The gym,located on the ground floor,is said to be a major attraction for officers,but is yet to be thrown open for them. Officials say that they are still awaiting an official circular to start using it. Before that happens,a demand has already been made for a professional trainer at the gym.

Missed Connection

THE UPA government,it turns out,is particularly heartened over the fact that a very inconvenient paragraph in the CAG report on the Commonwealth Games figures only in the conclusive portion,while the main body has nothing to provide a basis for the observation. It probably went missing during the cut-and-paste exercise, one UPA minister guessed,taking a pragmatic view. If that is so,the CAG obviously has to keep a close eye on its staff to ensure that the findings match the conclusions.

Bumper harvest

CONGRESS leaders from Uttar Pradesh are evincing a lot of interest in the draft Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation amp; Resettlement Bill,2011. They have been bringing delegations of farmers to Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh to express their opinion about current and past land acquisition process. While two junior leaders VM Singh and Vivek Bansal petitioned Ramesh with delegations of farmers from Amroha and Tappal Aligarh respectively,UP Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi is slated to petition Ramesh next with farmers from Bhatta Parsaul.

Testing Times

LEFT out of the four-member committee entrusted by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to look after party affairs in her absence,high-profile party general secretary Digvijaya Singh finds himself hemmed in even in Uttar Pradesh,of which he is in-charge. The recently-formed six-member screening committee for selection of party candidates for the 2012 Assembly elections has only one Singh loyalist,Pramod Tiwari. The chairman of the committee,Mohan Prakash,is closely associated with party general secretary Janardan Dwivedi while another member of the committee,Kalahandi MP Bhakta Charan Das,does not enjoy a great rapport with Singh who was said to have opposed his candidature when he was in-charge of Orissa. Apart from Singh,other members of the committee include Madhusudan Mistry and PCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi.