Weary wave early morning

Chief minister Nitish Kumar left for Bhutan on the state government’s 10-seater chopper on Wednesday. With a huge crowd of NDA ministers, legislators, leaders and supporters to see him off, the plane remained on the ground for at least 10 minutes before taking off. The patience of some of the visitors started to wear thin, as most of them had come at 5.30am without attending the nature’s call. Why is this plane taking so long to take off?” asked a JD (U) leader. His colleague reminded him that the 10-seater was the same plane purchased during President rule when Buta Singh was the governor, adding that the CAG report had declared that the state government had purchased an outdated plane for Rs 15 crore. Even when the plane finally took off, it hovered over the airport for some time making the chief minister’s supporters stay back and wave in the hope that the man who mattered most in Bihar politics would see them. It was only when the plane finally disappeared that the supporters rushed to their cars to return home.

 

Dabangg move

JP leaders and supporters are claiming that film star and party MP Shatughan Sinha is repeating one word in all his public speeches. “He (Shotgun) has begun to introduce all BJP leaders as ‘dabang’. A few days ago he introduced C.P. Thakur (state BJP chief) as a dabang leader. He also introduced another leader using the same title. He appears to be in a mode to promote his daughter Sonakshi Sinha by using the title of her hit film,” said a BJP leader. The BJP leaders, however, find no problem with Shotgun’s new mode. “It is better than him taking digs at the party leadership and even chief minister Nitish Kumar. It was a habit we all feared whenever he started to address a public function,” added the BJP leader.

Mike relief

Leaders love to make long speeches no matter the audience is listening or not. Recently, a meeting of the BJP dragged on, making the listeners in the hall a bit weary. When state party president C.P. Thakur took the mike and started his speech, the sound system conked out after a couple of minutes, much to the relief of the audience. An aide of Thakur went looking for the sound system man and found him sleeping in the hall. The man was woken up and the sound system was finally fixed, allowing Thakur to continue. “Somebody should have thrown the sound man out of the hall. We would have been spared of the boring speeches,” whispered a member of the audience.

 

Shrinking space for Opposition

The office of the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly is the place from where political turmoils have been triggered off so many times. On Wednesday, when its present occupant Abdul Bari Siddiqui held his press conference, the room was overcrowded. “This is the same room where my political Guru Karpoori Thakur used to hold his press meets. But during those days, the number of mediapersons were limited. Today the numbers are increasing so rapidly that I think I will have to search for another place to hold a news meet. This room is getting smaller and smaller by the day,” Siddiqui told the reporters.