Return of Jagmeet BrarIJ
He’s out, but not down. Sidelined by the All India Congress Committee (AICC), the ambitious Jagmeet Brar has returned to Punjab to breathe life into his dull political career in State politics. Brar’s importance in the Punjab Congress was limited only to the Congress Working Committee, where he was a special invitee. Now, with his ouster from the party’s decision-making body, and induction of his rival Capt Amarinder Singh as the permanent invitee, he has started making inroads into State Congress politics. In an apparent attempt towards the same, Brar had urged the party stalwarts to contest lok Sabha polls. Nobody took his “suggestion” seriously. They believed that it was an attempt to make space for himself. This is not all! Brar also claimed that he was “specially” moved to Punjab for party’s rejuvenation in the State. To tell the truth, Mr Brar, considering your wavering political career, and differences with all the senior State party leaders — including Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Capt Amarinder, and State congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa — leave aside the “party’s renaissance”, there’s a need of your resurgence first.
Met Dept flooded with phone calls
The phone of Chandigarh Meteorological Department never stopped ringing this week. The Met Department was flooded with hundreds of phone calls every day and the Met staff was busy attending the calls of residents asking for weather updates. After Uttarakhand flood fury, people are not taking any chances before planning their summer trips to the hill States and calling the local Met Department for weather forecast. A Met official said, “From info on current weather conditions to forecast of next one week, people are asking about weather of the neighbouring hilly States. Everyday, over hundred calls are received by the Department.” Troubled by the huge number of calls, the Met Department is regularly updating its website for weather forecast and also asking the residents to visit the website to get latest weather updates.
Mera number kab ayegaIJ
Several senior administrative officers of Haryana will retire in the months of June, July and September. These officials have started contacting Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda directly or indirectly for re-employment for some more time. They are aware that Hooda is quite flexible on the re-employment issue. He has already given re-employment to more than one dozen IAS, IPS and HCS officials in the State. Now the race among those aspirants for re-employment after retirement has already started. The officials instead of doing their duty, go to Hooda office or his residence to try their luck on getting extension.
Merry making in the Hills
A bike trip on one of the most treacherous terrain on the surface of earth, from Chandigarh to Kaza in Himachal was all pleasant, and gave an insight into the cool and calm nature of the people living in the hills. But on an ill-fated day this biker was caught among the holiday traffic, which like crazy was moving towards Shimla in a frenzied manner. What irked the biker most was the way people used the Himalayan Expressway as their spirit refueling station and car as their drawing rooms. Booze flowed like water on the mountainous terrain and the driving speed would have made Schumacher run for his title. There was no sign of any authority to keep a tab on drunken driving. All the biker did, with utter frustration, was to wish the bamboozled crowd a very ‘Happy Holiday’.
Nature gives Raja Saheb a break
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, known as ‘Raja Saheb’ calls the rains devastated Kinnaur his second home. Such was the coincidence that during his campaign for Mandi bypoll where his wife was contesting, he got stranded for 60 hours due to bad weather at Sangla. This provided him some rest from his hectic schedule of campaigning but his desperation of being in the field of action remained. As soon as the weather opened after 60 hours, he immediately rushed to Mandi to resume his campaigning without even holding a review meet to take stock of the situation of rains-affected areas.
More loyal than the king
Some top officials close to Raja Saheb were found working overtime last week due to the flash floods in Kinnaur district, part of Mandi parliamentary constituency. Every effort was made to stop any postponement of the election as they feared that it could lead to negative voting by the people who have been devastated by the floods. Such was the case that one officer even walked with a map of Kinnaur in his hand.
(Contributed by Monika Malik, Nishu Mahajan, Bhupinder Sharma, Nitindra Bandyopadhyay and Manohar lal)