No love lost?

New Delhi, March 1: Where is the Opposition’s sense of humour, P. Chidambaram might ask.

The finance minister would have been looking for a few laughs in the tedious budget speech when he announced a duty cut on pet food — “I have good news for cat and dog lovers,” he smiled.

But the humour passed the Opposition BJP and its parent, the RSS, by.

“We will not take this lying down, we will paste posters all over Delhi to tell people that while farmers are committing suicide and people are paying through their nose for rice and dal, the UPA government is pandering to dogs and cats,” snarled Vishwa Mitra Behl, founder-president of the Sangh parivar’s Laghu Udyog Bharti, an association of small industries.

L.K. Advani picked up the cue. “At a time when the common man feels deeply distressed about the high cost of his daily meals, it was astounding to hear the finance minister exult about the good news for cat and dog lovers.”

The 10 per cent duty cut will now be used in the BJP’s campaign against the Congress for the Delhi municipal polls.

Sushma Swaraj, never known for humour, and S.S. Ahluwalia, better known for sound and fury, were watching the budget on TV with former finance minister Yashwant Sinha in Advani’s chamber in Parliament. Sinha was busy jotting down points when the “cat and dog” gag had Sushma and Ahluwalia cocking their ears.

Ahluwalia, once a Congressman, was quick to sniff sycophancy. He declared that party chief Sonia Gandhi owns 10 dogs and Chidambaram was only trying to please her.

No one would vouch for the truth of his claim, but that didn’t stop Advani or Jagdish Shettigar, who was a member of the Prime Minister’s economic advisory council under the NDA, from barking disapproval.

Congress sources were dismissive of the claim about Sonia’s dogs: “What can you expect from somebody like Ahluwalia?”

Neither is Chidambaram a pet-lover — he has never owned a cat or a dog, they said. “If the RSS and BJP people lack a sense of humour, it’s not his fault.”