And while on Soni, for the second time in three months her proposed visit to China has had to be put off. Soni was to have attended an international travel mart in the Chinese city of Kunming in the first week of November when the Indian Embassy in Beijing advised against it. The reason given was that a trade-related event did not deserve a ministerial visit. However, sources had said the Embassy was reluctant about the tour because it felt it would be too exhausted from the high-profile visits of Sonia Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee who were scheduled to be in China just a week earlier than Soni. Something similar seems to have happened again with Soni having to postpone the inauguration of India’s long-awaited tourism office in Beijing later this month. The official reason for the postponement is that some clearances from the Chinese authorities are still awaited. But it has not stopped speculations that this time, it is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China that might be the true reason behind Soni’s aborted trip.