Mulayams Soft Stand

SP Chief Mulayam Singh Yadavs defence of Amar Singh,after the latter was interrogated by the Delhi Police in connection with the cash-for-vote scam,has taken everyone by surprise.

Listen to this article

Mulayams Soft Stand

00:00

1x 1.5x 1.8x

Mulayams Soft Stand

SP Chief Mulayam Singh Yadavs defence of Amar Singh,after the latter was interrogated by the Delhi Police in connection with the cash-for-vote scam,has taken everyone by surprise. While many party MPs were equally bemused,they could not muster enough courage to ask their party chief about his stand. However,MPs from other parties,including some from the Congress,got a chance to tackle Mulayam directly on Monday when he had to chair a meeting of the parliamentary standing committee on energy. While Mulayam repeated his defence of Amar Singh,party insiders believe that his remarks were aimed at reassuring his own deputy in the Lok Sabha,Rewati Raman Singh,who has been summoned by the Delhi Police in the same case. Mulayams public posturing in defence of Amar and Rewati was reassuring for the latter who appeared before the Delhi Police on Monday.

Defending their land

BEFORE the Sukna land scam and the Adarsh Housing scandal happened,the Defence Ministry regularly got complaints similar in nature to these incidents. Members of Parliament often wrote to the Defence Minister forwarding complaints of misallotment of land belonging to the services. As a consequence,Defence Minister A K Antony put systems in place to check such allotments,removed illegal encroachments,and digitised entire land records. However,he is now confronted with a different problem. He is again getting letters from MPs,but this time they are mostly related to requests seeking exemption from the encroachment drives initiated by the Defence Ministry to free illegally occupied land.

Nodding Acquaintance

IT is the kind of instant appreciation which would not be lost on anyone. The way BJP general secretary and chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad spontaneously nods his head every time party president Nitin Gadkari makes a point at party briefings,has become a routine gesture. Since Gadkari tends to speak at length,Prasads task is obviously long-drawn out too. Who said jugalbandi is an exclusive preserve of musicians?

Directory Delays

THE ministries affected by the recent Cabinet reshuffle have been quick to update their websites with information on their new ministers. But that is only on the surface,it seems. The home page or the ministers page has been updated but,in case of two ministries at least,not the telephone directories. These include the Ministry of Rural Development where Jairam Ramesh who was famous for keeping the Environment Ministrys website updated in almost real-time has taken charge. The telephone directory on the ministrys website still has Vilasrao Deshmukh as the minister. Ditto for the website of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs which shows Kantilal Bhuria as the minister in its telephone directory instead of V Kishore Chandra Deo.

Bar Code

IT may be a different matter that former Solicitor General Gopal Subramaium did not pay heed to the former law ministers call last year to step down as the chairman of Bar Council of India so that he could devote more time to his job as S-G. But now things have changed for certain. Following his resignation as S-G,he quickly moved to quit the office of BCI chairman. Since the government may take more time to formally announce the new S-G,the BCI has already elected Ashok K Parija and Zafar Ahmed Khan as its new chairman and vice-chairman respectively. While Parija is a members of the Bar Council of Orissa,Khan belongs to the Madhya Pradesh Bar council.