Guru8217;s Agenda

Even as flood-ravaged Uttarakhand struggles to cope with the disaster that struck last month,high profile yoga guru Ramdev

Even as flood-ravaged Uttarakhand struggles to cope with the disaster that struck last month,high profile yoga guru Ramdev has not lost sight of his main goal. He was travelling in Bihar early this week drumming up support for Narendra Modi and taking potshots at Nitish Kumar. Before that he was in Delhi,training his guns at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. On Thursday,the yoga guru of Haridwar-based Patanjali Yogpeeth moved from Muzaffarpur in Bihar to Ranchi to pursue his political agenda. As for the plight of people in Uttarakhand,in between his praise for Modi and diatribe against the Congress,he responds to queries about the situation in the state demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna.

WELL SCHOOLED

MOVE over Doon School. Three of Indias current ambassadors hold high school diploma from the same institution running since 1858 in small-town Patna: St Michaels High School. While Arun Kumar Singh is Indias envoy to France,Dilip Sinha is Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva and Yash Sinha recently presented his credentials as High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. The three also shared the same principal,the late Father Gordon Edmund Murphy,under whose guidance the school achieved its best. The line-up of Indian Foreign Service officers shows that there are more diplomats in the offing from this school.

IDENTITY CRISIS

THE Prime Minister-chaired NDMA has an unusual problem at hand. The NDMA issued a press statement on Thursday that a woman named Angeli Qwatra was found participating in various panel discussions on some TV channels impersonating as member,NDMA. The NDMA clarified that Qwatra was neither a member of NDMA nor member of the Advisory Committee of the NDMA and had no authority whatsoever to represent NDMA in any manner in the media. Interestingly,Qwatras website said she was the chairperson of an NGO called Philanthrope and she was involved in a mega project aimed at providing training on emergency aid measures to the masses. An NDMA official said they were shocked to find Qwatra representing the body on several talk shows.

ON SONG

FOR once,there was meeting of minds between BJP patriarch LK Advani and partys chief campaigner Narendra Modi. At the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting with party general secretaries on Thursday,the Gujarat Chief Minister was learnt to have highlighted that this was the 50th year of Lata Mangeshkars famous Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon song and pointed out that some party leaders in Mumbai were trying to celebrate a kind of Shaurya Saptah. Advani endorsed the initiative highlighting that ex-servicemen were an important constituency of the BJP and suggested that they should be made to feel proud as the party tries to connect with various groups in its election endeavour.

LEGAL CHANGES

THE CBI is yet again having a change in the legal team handling the coal allocation case being monitored by the Supreme Court. U U Lalit,who was appointed Special Public Prosecutor in the case after Additional Solicitor General Harin Rawal resigned,earlier this week informed the agency that he will be unable to attend the hearings. Reason: he had earlier defended Naveen Jindal who has now been made an accused in the coal scandal and would therefore like to recuse himself. Agency officials inform that another Additional Solicitor General,Siddharth Luthra,who is handling several other CBI briefs will appear in the coal allocation case too.