My pride, Didi: Trinamool launches tongue-in-cheek campaign on social media

No political campaign is ever complete without satire and this campaign by the TMC, too, has its share

To set right the reverses the Trinamool Congress (TMC) suffered during the Lok Sabha elections, the party is banking on its past association with political honchos — even rivals — to project itself as progressive. With young voters as its target, a campaign has been released on social media. No political campaign is ever complete without satire and this campaign by the TMC, Amar gorbo Mamata (Mamata, my pride), or AGM, too, has its share. Taking a dig at the Centre after the Income-Tax Department asked various puja committees to file returns, one of the AGM series ads on Twitter shows goddess Durga being urged by a tax official to file her I-T returns. A message at the end of the post asks if the goddess now needs to also apply for her PAN and Aadhaar cards.

Lithuania connection 

Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu is on a five-day visit to the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. On the second day of his visit on Sunday, Naidu was in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Addressing the Indian diaspora there, Naidu said Lithuania had a special place in the heart of Indians because Mahatma Gandhi's closest friend and soulmate, Hermann Kallenbach, was from Lithuania. Naidu thanked the Lithuanian government for commemorating their friendship by installing a sculpture of Gandhi and Kallenbach near the latter's birthplace in Rusne. The statue, funded by Cipla Chairman Yusuf Hamied, was unveiled in 2015. Hamied's mother, Luba Derczanski Hamied, was a Lithuanian Jew, and a plaque on the statue records that it was “donated by the Yusuf and Farida Hamied Foundation in memory of Luba Derczanski Hamied (born February 3, 1903) who lived in Vilnius Lithuania till 1928 and thereafter in India until her demise on 4th April 1991".

Anxious Sunday

The murmurs of the first-ever cabinet expansion of the two-year-old Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) — initially speculated to take place on Monday — kept Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ministers and legislators on their toes all of Sunday. While “good performers” were eyeing a promotion, laggards were anxious that they were not in the line of fire. That as many as 14 more ministers would be accommodated in the council gave hope to many. The party leadership had advised its ministers and legislators to be present in Lucknow on Monday morning. However, late on Sunday night it was “informally” conveyed to all that the purported expansion had been postponed because former Union minister and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley remained critical.