Off The Record: February 24, 2020

Caste politics

Last week, the Karnataka Assembly was told of castes in Opposition leader Siddaramaiah’s inimitable style. Apparently, in a Congress meeting in the 1980s, B Rachaiah showered praise on the then Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde. Rachaiah was Dalit and Hegde a Brahmin. J H Patel, a Lingayat intervened, “sit down, Rachaiah. Hegde has a history of 3,000 years, I have 800 years. But yours started on January 26, 1950, when the Constitution was adopted.” Siddaramaiah hailed that only Patel could have come up with this. “The only other leader capable of thinking like this is K R Ramesh Kumar,” he said. Someone from behind shouted, “He’s got 3,000 years as well.”

Bharath Joshi, Bengaluru

Em-Pawar-ing speech

NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, often referred to as Maratha strongman, has a bit of advice for the next generation of aspiring politicians. “Exert maximum efforts, nothing short of that,” Pawar said in response to a query about the basic qualifications required for being a politician. “Don’t worry about failure, give it your best shot,” said Pawar, who has never lost an election to Vidhan Sabha, Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. “I have been in politics for over 50 years, held several posts— in the opposition, in the government. When I meet young people I get energy,” said the 80-year-old four-time Maharashtra CM and ex-union minister, who also held portfolios like defence and agriculture.

Mrityunjay Bose, Mumbai

House statistics

The Opposition always complains that they do not get enough time to raise issues in Parliament, but a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Rajya Sabha Secretariat claimed it may not be fair to say so. The analysis of Rajya Sabha performance in the first leg of Budget Session was done on the orders of Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, who wanted to know whether parties were getting equitable opportunities. The statistics showed that parties broadly got their share of time. The combined Opposition got slightly more, it claims. BJP with 34% of the strength in the House got 33% (480) of total 1,460 opportunities available in Question Hour, Zero Hour and debates. Congress with 19% strength got 24% (345) opportunities. Among the opposition and non-NDA parties, Congress and Trinamool Congress got higher opportunities while BJD, DMK, TRS and CPI(M) got their due share. MPs from regional parties outshone others with respect to individual performances; 18 members from regional parties (60%) were among the top 30 performers while 8 from BJP 4 of Congress accounted for the remaining 40%, the report showed.

Shemin Joy, New Delhi

New Mumbai attraction

Very soon, one would be able to witness a changing of the guard ceremony in Mumbai similar to the ceremony in New Delhi’s Rashtrapati Bhavan and London’s Buckingham Palace. Maharashtra’s home minister Anil Deshmukh and tourism, protocol and environment minister Aaditya Thackeray are working on this plan. The changing of the guard is being planned at Maharashtra police headquarters at Colaba, located a stone’s throw distance from the gateway of India.

Mrityunjay Bose, Mumbai

Missing bullets

The comptroller and auditor general found recently that 12,061 bullets were missing from the Kerala Police. This inspired trolling on social media, many posts were targeted at Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who heads the Home department. One such post said that one of the missing bullets had been traced and only 12,060 were now missing—in 2007, while Pinarayi Vijayan was serving as Kerala CPM secretary, he was stopped at the Chennai airport as a bullet had been found in his bag. The ‘troller’ joked that this bullet was one of the 12,061 bullets that went missing from Kerala Police.

Arjun Raghunath, Thiruvananthapuram