Missing in Action

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi have been conspicuous by their absence during the first few days of the monsoon session of Parliament.

Missing in Action

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi have been conspicuous by their absence during the first few days of the monsoon session of Parliament. While Sonia is said to be unwell,reportedly suffering from viral fever,the reason for Rahuls absence is not clear. Party sources said Sonia had recovered and was likely to be back in action in Parliament as early as Thursday.

Rooming Rights

If you cant snatch his portfolio,grab his room. This seemed to be the Congress design when Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni staged a coup of sorts and parked herself in the Parliament House room of Mamata Banerjee with a little help from Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. Mamata had inherited it from her predecessors in the Railways Ministry and no surprise then that her successor Dinesh Trivedi also believed that the same rights had passed on to him. Not one to give up,Trivedi has taken the matter to the Prime Minister himself. In the interregnum,he put up quite a show on Wednesday,parking himself on a bench outside that room and conducting his official business from there. He even held a meeting with RJD leader Lalu Prasad from that position.

Gubernatorial Stakes

With the Cabinet reshuffle over,the focus has now shifted to the appointment of governors in several states. The grapevine has it that the government was likely to announce the appointments sometime next week. While several names are doing the rounds,it is learnt that former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister K Rosaiah are among the hopefuls. Both leaders have been seen in Delhi in recent days. Several retired bureaucrats are also said to be in the reckoning.

Witness War

The Joint Parliamentary Committee JPC on the 2G spectrum allocation scam is set to witness a tussle between ruling and Opposition members over the names of witnesses to be summoned. While Yashwant Sinha has already written to Chairman P C Chacko to call Home Minister P Chidambaram as a witness,ruling party members of the panel are now stepping up the offensive. They have written to Chacko requesting him to call those associated with the Prime Ministers Office PMO during Atal Bihari Vajpayees time. Among others,the ruling party members want the then National Security Advisor Brajesh Mishra and former PMs foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya to be summoned as witnesses. While their request to summon an ailing Vajpayee,who had kept the Telecommunications portfolio for a short period,is unlikely to be accepted,Congress MPs say that they would not let up on their demand to call his associates.

Secret Base

A report of the standing committee on Defence seems to have let out a well kept secret. The Defence Ministry and Navy have been very secretive about the upcoming nuclear submarine base on the Eastern Coast but a blanked out portion in a recent committee report indicates that close to Rs 1,100 crore have been sanctioned for creating infrastructure for the underground facility.