Green bogey

On Thursday afternoon, Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had to wait for almost an hour at North Block to meet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. All the while Ramesh was fiddling with his mobile phone when he suddenly got a call from a prankster: “Sir, the Cabinet had announced a 10 per cent hike in Dearness Allowance (DA) for central government employees. What will be the environmental impact of this decision?”

Left out?

The Left parties might support Home Minister P Chidambaram’s idea of withdrawing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from Jammu & Kashmir, but it was a Left leader who engaged in a war of words with him at the all-party meeting on the issue. Chidambaram was in charge of floor management and invited leaders to take turns to speak according to seating order starting from the left of the table. After five or six leaders had had their say, Chidambaram suddenly changed the sequencing and asked Kashmiri leaders on the opposite side to take the microphone. This infuriated Forward Bloc leader Debabrat Biswas who sharply told Chidambaram that order should be maintained since he, too, had something to say. Order was restored only after the prime minister intervened.