Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal breaks Twitter silence

People missing an educated PM like Dr Manmohan Singh, Kejriwal tweeted

By 2011, Aam Aadmi Party leader and now Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal  had emerged as the loudest critic of then prime minister Manmohan Singh and the United Progressive Alliance government's second term. But lately, Kejriwal's party has been keen on joining the united opposition.

Kejriwal was also present at the oath-taking ceremony of Janata Dal (Secular) leader H D Kumaraswamy and Congress leader G Parameshwara in Bengaluru, but the Congress leadership didn't want to be photographed with him. On Thursday, Kejriwal tweeted: “People missing an educated PM like Dr Manmohan Singh... It's dawning on people now that the PM should be educated.” He also posted a link to a Wall Street Journal article on the falling rupee.

“Your Google”, “our” Google

If Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath's deputy Dinesh Sharma is to be believed, India had its “own Google” many centuries back. “Your Google has started now, but our Google started long time back. Narad Muni was the epitome of information. He could reach anywhere and transfer a message from one place to another by saying ‘Narayana’ three times,”he said at an event to mark ‘Hindi Journalism Day’. 

He also claimed journalism started during the days of Mahabharata and offered many instances from Mahabharata to support his claim. Citing Sanjay, Dhritarashtra's charioteer, who narrated “a bird's eye view of the war of Mahabharata” in Kurukshetra while sitting in Hastinapur, the minister said, “Yeh live telecast nahi to aur kya hai (if it is not live telecast, then what is it?)”.

Alignments and realignments

On Thursday, Congress leader and Lok Sabha member Jyotiraditya Scindia thanked Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi on Twitter for writing to Minister of Law & Justice, Electronics & Information Technology  Ravi Shankar Prasad to block a website that claims to calculate dowry amount grooms could expect. 

She asked Prasad to also take action against the developers of the website. Scindia had been flagging the issue, and the response from Maneka Gandhi was prompt. “Thank you for taking action Maneka Gandhiji,” Scindia tweeted. Scindia is a close friend of Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Speculation has been rife in Delhi's political circles that BJP Lok Sabha member Varun Gandhi was finding himself suffocated in his party, and that there was renewed warmth in his ties with cousins Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.