For Amma and Maran
Former Additional Solicitor General l Nageswara Rao enjoys the trust of both Tamil Nadu’s iron lady J Jayalalithaa and her bitter political foe Dayanidhi Maran. The duo trust Rao so much that they engage him to deal with their most sensitive cases. Rao appeared for the former Telecom Minister in the Supreme Court in the Aircel-Maxis deal, though he has been consistently defending Amma before the Karnataka High Court in the disproportionate assets case.
Cong at Cricketing best
With Cricket flu gripping the nation after the poll fever, the Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi relied on cricketing lexicon to make political points. So, he portrayed Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar as Shahid Afridi of India, and soon after the Delhi poll verdict he compared BJP’s plight to Team India’s debacle on the Australian tour. Interestingly, after scoring a duck in Delhi Assembly polls, the Congress had to cancel its scheduled AICC briefing as none of the spokesperson was ready to face the bouncers from the media.
No more snacks
Journalists covering the Defence beat are no longer served piping hot samosas and coffee when they go news hunting at the Defence Ministry headquarters at South Block. Reason: the Ministry has not cleared the pending Bill of the catering contractor for the last three months.
Tiger sighting
When Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, recently committed to the international community that India will donate tiger cubs for global conservation of the big cats, the Russian tiger conservationists were happiest of the lot. Sharing excitement with their Indian counterpart, at a recent conference of tiger range nations , the Russian participants quipped, “Tigers in our country are as elusive as ghosts. Out whole life passes working for their conservation, but we get to see none. Now we can at least hope to see them in flesh and blood in our life time.”
Attentive Sushma
last week during the concluding session of Heads of Missions conference, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj floored the diplomats with her “inspiring” speech. But more than that the envoys were impressed with the Madam Minister for replying to nearly every issue raised by them during the five-day conference. Sushma was so attentive that she even remembered the names of the ambassadors who had raised these issues. During her concluding speech, she responded to these issues by taking names of the ambassadors, who had raised them!
Casual approach
Despite spurt in swine flu cases and deaths since early January this year , the Union Health Ministry seems yet to wake up to the menace. Its casual approach was evident at a recent Press interaction when senior health officials could not provide data of swine flu death and cases reported in January 2014 and 2015. In fact, the officials were not even aware of the trend of the mortality due to the contagious disease..
Unused ladoos
A huge stockpile of ladoos stored in the BJP office on the eve of the Delhi poll verdict, had not takers with the party’s humiliating debacle. A BJP spokesman in the party office, painting a grim picture, snapped, “ We could have given them to the AAP leaders at half price. They can distribute these among their volunteers .” A journo quipped, “Dane dane per likha hai khane wale ka naam.”
Home Ministry vs media
New Home Secretary lC Goyal reached out to the media by holding a one-hour interaction with the beat journos last week. In the very beginning, he announced he would be a listener and not feed them with news. On the request by the journos for regular media briefing, he offered a diplomatic smile, but no commitment. The journos were clearly disappointed.