Another shoe attack

Tota Singh, minister for NRI affairs in the Punjab government, and his delegation came under attack in New York recently when protesters threw stones and hurled a shoe at them. Shoe-hurling at politicians goes back a long way. It grabbed international attention when in 2008, journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at then US President George W Bush during a 2008 press conference in Iraq. Closer home, in 2009, a shoe lobbed by Jarnail Singh, a journalist, missed India's then Home Minister P Chidambaram by a fair margin. The same year, Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani received a similar treatment from party member Pawas Agarwal. In 2012, a shoe was thrown at Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi during an election rally in Dehradun. In January this year, former chief minister of Bihar Jitan Ram Manjhi avoided a shoe hurled at him during a janata durbar.