Mr and Mrs Naidu

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu is famous for his wordplay, which he uses adroitly to wriggle out of tricky questions from the media. On Tuesday, Naidu, who is in charge of the urban development and information and broadcasting portfolios, resorted to the same trick to convey that he was neither going to be the presidential nor the vice-presidential nominee of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. The elections to the two posts are due next month. “I neither want to become rashtrapati (president), nor do I want to become uprashtrapati (vice-president). I am happy being Usha’s pati (his wife M Usha),” Naidu told his audience. Given his long parliamentary experience, the minister was being talked of as a possible occupant of the post of vice-president, who is also the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.