Delhi confidential: Hooda In A Corner

Tanwar ensured that the Hooda camp was marginalised and the anti-Hooda camp represented by him.

The Congress’s Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a former two-time Chief Minister, was outsmarted by his own party’s Ashok Tanwar in the selection of PCC delegates in the organisational elections. Among the 178 new delegates, the buzz is that Hooda managed to get in only around 40 of his supporters. Tanwar ensured that the Hooda camp was marginalised and the anti-Hooda camp represented by him, CLP leader Kiran Chaudhary, Captain Ajay Yadav and Kumari Selja got their loyalists elected. Hooda, sources said, waited for over three hours at the AICC headquarters on Tuesday to have an audience with central election authority officials, Madhusudan Mistry and Mullappally Ramachandran, to get some of his loyalists included in the PCC.

Women’s Voices

The BSF deployed on the western and eastern borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively, will showcase an exhibition and welfare meet where the wife of Union Home minister Rajnath Singh Savitri Devi will be present on the first day. The wife of Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Neelam, will speak. The wife of national security advisor, Ajit Doval, Aruni, will be the guest of honour on the third day. On the second day, Anupriya Patel, Minister of State (health) will be the chief guest.

Minister’s Feedback

A meeting of the top brass of the Indian Railways last week got some candid feedback from a former daily passenger. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said he had travelled in Mumbai’s local trains every day between 1979 and 1987. In the 30 years since 1987, there had been no improvement in the local train service. The top officials are said to have taken the “feedback” seriously.

Silence On Nehru

Referring to the 1942 Quit India movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday spoke about how at the peak of the protest, when Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and other national leaders were jailed by the British, leaders such as Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia inspired the youth. The name of another Quit India movement stalwart Jawaharlal Nehru, who was also jailed at that time, went unmentioned. Modi did allude to Congress leaders later when he said that after Independence, unlike those vying for a spot for themselves in the “corridors of power (satta ke galliyon mein)”, Jayaprakash Narayan kept himself away from politics and worked for the benefit of people.