Surprise Visit

State-level leaders had already done the customary rounds to the family and the administration thought it was all over.

Surprise Visit

Local administration officials in Lakhimpur district of Uttar Pradesh were taken by surprise by the sudden visit of Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi,who decided to meet the mourning family of a girl who was allegedly raped and murdered inside a police station a few days ago. State-level leaders had already done the customary rounds to the family and the administration thought it was all over. However,the Congress leadership belatedly realised that a visit by Rahul was important to balance his well-publicised visits to Dalit families. The girl belonged to the backward class minority community,whose support the Congress is eyeing to consolidate its resurgence in the state.

PM leads all

Asked if Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs interaction with newspaper editors was a move to isolate the civil society,Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said,We are civil society,you are civil society. We have said time and again what are MPs,what is the Prime Minister,if not the civil society. He is the elected Prime Minister; he is the leader of the civil society.

PROMPT UPDATE

SOME good seems to have come out of the recent embarrassment caused by the goof-ups detected in the list of most-wanted criminals. It has forced different law enforcement agencies to be more prompt in communicating with each other. So when the Madhya Pradesh police arrested former SIMI chief Syed Salaluddin Salar last week,they wasted no time in informing the CBI about their catch. Rightfully so,since the MP police had requested the CBI to issue a red notice against Salar. The CBI was already processing that request when it was informed of the arrest. Another goof-up in the making was thus prevented.

KEEP GUESSING

OFFICIALS in the Health Ministry are curious to find out the reason for the sudden withdrawal of resignation by Medical Council of India Secretary Sangeeta Sharma. Only a few days earlier,Sharma had put in her papers,alleging that MCI Chairman K K Talwar had behaved rudely with her. She had also threatened to make a formal complaint with the National Commission for Women. No one is clear in the Ministry about what really happened in the intervening days for Sharma to now proclaim that all issues with Talwar had been amicably resolved.

SOME SATISFACTION

SOME BJP leaders were unable to hide their glee over the fact that Anna Hazare and his colleagues will have to come to their party office to ask for support from their leadership. The party was peeved with the manner in which Anna had reacted after being called the mukhaota of BJP and RSS by the Congress. Anna had said linking him with BJP or RSS was an attempt to malign him. Some leaders are now wondering aloud whether Anna and his team would become tainted after interacting with them at the party office and seeking the partys support.