Conspicuous by absence

The Department of Telecommunications launched the much-touted National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project on Monday. Those who attended the launch included Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad, who inaugurated the project; Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy; the state's Minister for Industry and Information Technology P K Kunhalikutty; and Telecom Secretary Rakesh Garg. One of the guests took great pleasure in pointing out that despite the event being held in Thiruvananthapuram, the Congress MP from the constituency, Shashi Tharoor, who is currently at the centre of a controversy surrounding his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death last year, had been deliberately left off the guest list.