Derailed plans

Road Transport and Highways Minister C P Joshi was so sure of retaining the Railway Ministry, which he had got as additional charge some time back, in the recent reshuffle that he had moved his entire office and staff to Rail Bhawan. Grapevine has it that he was told that he would be divested of the Road Transport and Highways portfolio and be given the Railways which has a higher profile and is much in demand. So when the portfolios were announced, he was taken by surprise. He has now been left explaining that he had moved his office to Rail Bhawan just so that his office in Transport Bhawan could be refurbished.

Unreserved Berth

HAVING been left out of the ministry yet again, seven-term Congress MP from Nagpur, Vilas Muttemwar is trying his best to hide the disappointment and has found an interesting explanation for his exclusion from the recent Cabinet reshuffle. "I was perhaps being considered for a ministerial berth so that I could add to my status for facing BJP chief Nitin Gadkari. Now that Gadkari's own stock has gone down, I don't obviously need such a boost."

Gurgaon's Great Leap

THE conference of the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation brought Gurgaon on the map of locations that can host large multinational international conferences. It is learnt that the Haryana government, especially Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had worked very hard to convince the MEA that Gurgaon could successfully host a big inter-governmental conference like this. Foreign Ministers and secretaries from 19 countries in the region participated in the conference. And though Hooda himself could not make it to the event, new External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid thanked him profusely for ensuring that the conference went off smoothly.

Getting the Treatment

... contd.

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