Surprise Visitor

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy,who is in the capital on an official trip,had an unusual visitor.

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy,who is in the capital on an official trip,had an unusual visitor on Monday. Embattled former bureaucrat P J Thomas met the chief minister for a short while at the Kerala House. The timing of the meeting has raised eyebrows given the order of a special Vigilance court earlier this month to investigate if Chandy had any involvement in the deal to import palmolein in 1991 when he was the finance minister. The case has already claimed Thomas,who lost his appointment as the CVC.

Not making the cut

While Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi,Congress Legislature Party chief Pramod Tiwari and the wife of Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid,Louis Khurshid,made it to the first list of 73 candidates for Assembly elections early next year,there were two notable exceptions Ratnakar Singh,the son-in-law of Congress general secretary in-charge of UP Digvijaya Singh,and Rakesh Verma,the son of partys new OBC face and Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma. While both names were in the list presented before the Central Election Committee,they did not figure in the final list that was released by the party.

Precautionary Measures

As the government is working overtime to defuse the Anna Hazare crisis,even small actions are being noticed and analysed. At the Congress core group meeting at Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs residence on Monday evening,two senior leaders A K Antony and P Chidambaram arrived in unmarked cars. While the reason for not using official cars was unclear,it led to speculation that extra care could have been taken in this atmosphere of uncertain protests. Sources pointed out that security had been beefed up at the residences of certain other ministers like Kapil Sibal.

Saffron Shade

Samajwadi Party leaders are seeing a saffron tinge in the protests that are taking place outside the homes of Members of Parliament in support of Anna Hazares demands. Senior Samajwadi Party leader Mohan Singh believes that the protests outside his house in his home district were carried out by RSS workers. I found out that the people protesting outside my house are members of the RSS, Singh said,adding that even the people protesting outside the house of senior SP leader Rewati Raman Singh in Allahabad were associated with the RSS.

Spreading Wings

WITH the role of security forces in internal issues increasing by the day,the government is moving to create laws and procedures to empower them. The latest attempt is to give a wider mandate to the Border Security Force,created exclusively to guard the considerable land border of the nation. The government has moved a proposal to amend the BSF Act,1968 that will enable the force to be deployed in areas other than the border of India or its adjoining areas. The force,however,is already deployed in anti-Naxal operations,counter-insurgency roles and disaster management roles throughout the country.