Pranab Mukherjee is not Mamata Banerjee’s favourite Congress leader as she suspects he is soft on the CPI(M). But recently, the two once-antagonistic Bengal leaders too seem to have smoked the peace pipe. Mukherjee made overtures and Banerjee responded. On the budget exercise, Mukherjee played on to Banerjee’s regional chauvinism by pointing out that this year both the railway budget and the general budget would be tabled by Bengalis. He noted that this had happened only once earlier during Indira Gandhi’s regime when he was finance minister and A.B.A Ghani Khan Choudhury was railway minister in the early Eighties. In the run up to the budget presentation, Mamata visited Mukherjee every evening at his residence and it is believed he offered helpful hints on the budget and what steps she could take to help Bengal and her constituency.

Government twitters

The mandarins of the Ministry of External Affairs pride themselves on the need for discretion and secrecy in their line of business. They are taken aback that Minister for State, Shashi Tharoor, regularly regales his fan club on Twitter with accounts of his professional duties. Tharoor explains just which visiting dignitaries he has met, how he is trying to put the Thiruvanthapuram passport office in order and so on.

Another prominent politician who uses an Internet social networking site to air his views on public issues is J&K Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah. On his Facebook, Abdullah has come out strongly against the Indian security forces in Kashmir. “Omar Abdullah has had it with security forces ”. Abdullah’s indignation for the attempted molestation in Baramulla and subsequent shooting of a demonstrator at a protest rally is understandable, but is Facebook the right place to air your administrative frustrations?

... contd.