Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Lost Cause
It has been nearly three months since the election of Pranab Mukherjee as President of India. His nearest competitor,P A Sangma,is still waiting for his petition challenging Mukherjees election to be heard. In fact,the Supreme Court has not even constituted the Bench to hear Sangmas petition.
IT seems that L K Advanis suggestion to reaffirm the BJPs commitment to secularism is being taken seriously by senior party leaders. A few days ago party president Nitin Gadkari addressed a gathering at Deoband,the seat of the influential Islamic seminary Darool Uloom. On Friday,both he and Sushma Swaraj attended a Mahila Minority Sammelan where the two talked at length about the partys record on non-discrimination,whenever it has been in power at the Centre and in the states ruled by it. Swaraj mentioned the rajdharma practised by the BJP-ruled states and singled out Madhya Pradesh as an example. Gadkari,on the other hand,highlighted the achievements of Gujarat.
Missing Trivedi
FORMER railway minister Dinesh Trivedi was sorely missed during a meeting of a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport,Tourism and Culture,which was discussing rail safety on Thursday. Trivedi,a member of the committee,could not make it to the meeting and many other members acknowledged that he would probably have come up with the best inputs on the subject. As railway minister,Trivedi had hiked passenger fares to raise money for rail safety a decision that ultimately cost him his job but one that he continued to defend even then. In fact,even committee chairman Sitaram Yechury remarked that the panel would have benefited a great deal,had Trivedi been present at the meeting.
Forward Planning
THE advisory board of the Mumbai-based Forward Markets Commission,a regulatory body for the commodity futures market,has recently been reconstituted by the Food Ministry. Out of the 17 members in the advisory board,eight happen to belong to Kerala,including two journalists,one of them based in Delhi. The Food Ministry,incidentally,is headed by K V Thomas who also belongs to Kerala.
Commando Tactics
AT a lecture organised by the National Security Guard,West Bengal Governor and former NSA M K Narayanan narrated an old but interesting anecdote to highlight the role of the NSG when it had just been created. The head of state of a foreign country was visiting Delhi in the late 1980s and was travelling with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a motorcade. The then commissioner of Delhi Police was running a few minutes late and took a short cut to reach the venue where the two leaders were headed. In the hurry,his car came right in front of the vehicle in which the foreign dignitary was travelling,prompting the NSG commandos to jump out of their vehicles and take combat positions as they were trained to do. However,realising that the apparent intruder was none other than the Delhi Police Commissioner,the commondos moved back. But Rajiv Gandhi apparently was not very impressed. Narayanan,who was the director of Intelligence Bureau then,said the Prime Minister asked him as to how did the NSG commandos know that it was the Delhi Police chief. Why wasnt the man in the car shot? he asked Narayanan. For the record,the Delhi Police Commissioner in question was Ved Prakash Marwah.
