New Delhi, January 17: It certainly seemed like a mutual admiration society when Jammu and Kashmir’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti and Pakistani lawyer-activist Aitzaz Ahsan lavished praise on each other.
It happened at a recent India-Pakistan peace conference in the capital. He was the best and she was the best, they said of each other.
That Mehbooba Mufti’s favourite colour is green is well known and her scarf, veil and even her party flag don that colour, which incidentally also happens to be the shade of the Pakistani flag. If that was not enough, at the conference she was heard beseeching organisers to readjust the seating arrangement as she wanted to share her space with Pakistani delegates, and she did that.
Strange but this geniality and warmth come even after the Kashmiri leader was denied a Pakistani visa last month.
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Amar Singh demonstrates his indispensability to Mulayam
Even for a battle-hardened politician like Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, the sudden resignation of his factotum Amar Singh from all party posts came as a surprise. .
Never one to be fearful of swimming against the tide, Mulayam Singh was under immense pressure from Amar Singh’s detractors and family members to accept the resignation immediately. For a couple of days he did keep quiet and was preparing for a future minus his trusted lieutenant. But in a sudden volte-face, he changed his mind and requested Amar Singh to take back his resignation – much to the dismay of the once-powerful Thakur’s critics.
Mulayam Singh went one step further and invited him to be the chief guest at the closing function of the annual Saifai Mahotsava in his ancestral village.
Leaders who once boasted of their proximity to Mulayam Singh were not only taken aback by his turnabout but also had to do some quick repair work in the event that Amar Singh made a return. Now some of the vocal critics are singing a different song, saying they were quoted out of context and would like him back!
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Kidney power deepens Amar’s secular beliefs
Amar Singh’s faith in secularism has apparently deepened. And this is largely because of his new kidney.
He is grateful to a Keralite Christian youth who was the donor after he underwent a transplantation treatment in Singapore in July last year. Praising the Christian youth, Amar Singh said in his blog: “It has deepened my faith in secularism.”
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Gender justice – for judges’ wives
With Chief Justice of India (CJI) K.G. Balakrishnan batting for pocket money to judges’ wives accompanying them on official jaunts abroad, has gender justice truly arrived?
The CJI is reported to have taken up the cause of his colleagues in the higher judiciary soon after the ‘obey-your-wife’ sermon delivered by his colleague Justice Markandey Kaju.
Within months of Justice Katju’s homily, Balakrishnan decided to lock horns with the government over denial of pocket money to his wife during his official tours to London and Dublin last October.
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Division of power for Pawar clan
Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar seems to have marked the turf for the two main inheritors of his political legacy in the family. Party sources say his daughter Supriya Sule is being groomed for a national role while nephew Ajit Pawar will take over the reins of leadership in Maharashtra at an appropriate time.
Sule was last week inducted into the party’s working committee and is expected to work towards acquiring a national profile. Pawar’s division of responsibilities is a lesson for his fellow Maharashtrian leader Bal Thackeray whose son and nephew are at loggerheads.
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Charm offensive in Africa
Chatting up the who’s who, touching diamonds and turning on the charm offensive was Salma Ansari during her husband and Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari’s tri-nation visit to Africa.
She was all enthusiasm when it came to the rhythmic music and dances that punctuated the several ceremonial welcomes and state banquets. During most sightseeing tours, she was the one who was asking the most questions, rather than her husband.
Not surprisingly, she bonded very well with Malawi’s first female Vice President, Joyce Banda, who is quite a formidable lady.
At the tour of De Beer’s Diamond Trading Company Botswana, Salma Ansari was highly interested in the piles of different grades of rough diamonds kept on the long white tables. In her enthusiasm, she even touched and handled some of the rough diamonds.
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Full attendance for Gadkari’s class
Braving the biting winter cold, all 24 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators of Delhi not only reached the assembly well in time but also presented an unusually united face. For, Nitin Gadkari, the party’s man of the moment, had come calling for a pep talk.
During their hour-long interaction, the legislators listened to him carefully and were quite impressed with Gadkari’s fresh ideas. One message that the young BJP president sent across: Stop the infighting and work for the people.
For starters, there certainly was full attendance!
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Will Priyanka keep date with politics?
It is a calendar that has brought cheer to Congress supporters and also triggered speculation on whether Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will now expand her work in the party in the coming months.
Though she has often remarked in the past that politics is not a strong pull, and only people are, this calender has got people talking. Posted on a website pressbrief.in, which is a repository of information on the Gandhi family, the new year calendar captures Priyanka’s charisma during her meetings in Rae Bareli and Amethi.
It was launched on her birthday Jan 12 and portrays the younger of the Gandhi siblings greeting people in colourful saris. She had campaigned in only two constituencies in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
Interestingly, banners extolling her virtues have come up on important city roads and have not been removed – despite edicts from local authorties that they will not allow illegal banners and posters as they are eyesores in a city preparing for the Commonwealth Games.
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Diplomacy and dance go hand in hand
One of the most popular ambassadors in the diplomatic circuit is newly arrived German envoy Thomas Matussek. The reasons are two fold: one, Matussek is an old India hand, having served here as press counsellor in the German embassy in the mid-1980s; two, his wife Ulla is a noted Bharatanatyam dancer.
Ulla Matussek has been ambassador of this Indian classical art in countries where her husband had been posted in the interim. She now wants to utilise her second stint in Delhi to learn Carnatic music and has become in her own right a much talked about celebrity in the capital’s vibrant cultural circles.
–IANS