NCP leaders Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel learnt of S M Krishna’s appointment as governor of Maharashtra from television. When Pawar protested to the Prime Minister, he pinned the blame on Home Minister Shivraj Patil—whom the Congress is in the habit of making the perennial scapegoat—for not informing its Maharashtra ally in advance. The NCP plans to boycott Krishna’s swearing-in, not because it is against Krishna personally, but it feels that someone from Karnataka cannot take an impartial view on the longstanding border dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka. In fact, every Maharashtra governor’s address at the start of the Assembly session refers to the demand for the return of territory wrongfully included in Karnataka. Meanwhile, the DMK is fuming at the Central Government’s proposal to appoint S Ramani of the TN police as Special Director of the CBI so that he can eventually head the investigating agency. Ramani had interrogated M Karunanidhi and was the coordinator in the POTA case against Vaiko. Sniping range Only 32 MPs out of a total of some 780-odd parliamentarians participated in the sports meet organised by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs last week. (Rahul Gandhi who had signed up for badminton stayed away because of a knee problem. P Chidambaram was another no show.) Rajiv Shukla punned that there was a complete lack of sportsmanship in politics today. To which Lalit Suri quipped that considering Shukla’s skills as a trouble shooter, rifle shooting was his best bet. Furious that most of the media did not carry Gauri Advani’s string of unsubstantiated allegations against her former father-in-law L K Advani, Laloo Yadav pounced on a senior scribe in Parliament’s Central Hall and accused her and her tribe of having sold out to the BJP and ordered her out of Central Hall. The journalist took exception to his language and his attribution of motives. She said she had a valid pass and had no intention of leaving. When Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad intervened on her behalf, Laloo lost his cool and accused the Congress of trying to save its government by making a deal with the BJP to the effect that Gauri’s letter should not be raised in Parliament. Azad chided him that once MPs started trading allegations on private lives of others, there would be no end to the mudslinging. That way anyone could demand a white paper on who is with whom, he protested. Night out in Laos The Indian delegation which accompanied Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Laos discovered on its arrival in Vientiane that the Laotian government had ordered all nightclubs to be closed by midnight during the ASEAN meet as a security measure. (There had been a bomb blast on the eve of the conference). But that didn’t suit some members of the Indian delegation. They had enough clout to get one of the nightclubs re-opened for their benefit. Damp squib dhamaka The reason L K Advani’s former daughter-in-law Gauri Advani did not hold an official press conference, reply to any questions from the media or even sign a copy of the letter against Advani which was circulated in Delhi’s Press Club was fear of a defamation suit. Gauri, though a lawyer, was successfully sued for defamation by former deputy high commissioner in London Hardeep Puri some years back for alleging that he had tried to threaten her into granting a divorce to her former husband, Jayant Advani. Gauri had to apologise eventually to Puri and pay damages and court fees in a British court. Gauri simply paid a fleeting visit to the Press Club in Delhi where copies of her letter were circulated and departed as quickly as she arrived. It was an impromptu affair with a political activist close to Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav telephoning several newspersons and urging them to rush to the club if they wanted to witness a ‘‘dhamaka (fireworks)’’. The club authorities were not even informed about the function. Cameramen shy away Cameramen were given a five-minute photo op during the meeting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with Pakistan PM Shaukat Aziz at Hyderabad House. After that they were shooed away by officials on the ground that the two PMs needed some privacy to talk freely. But when the PMs’ wives joined the group, Aziz wanted a group photograph. The security staff searched high and low for a cameraman in the compound only to find that they had all left. Finally an agency reporter volunteered to phone his office to send a photographer post haste to shoot the foursome.
