Centre of attention

While India made history at the midnight launch of the goods and services tax in the Central Hall of Parliament, all eyes followed the Bharatiya Janata Party chief, Amit Shah. After the president, Pranab Mukherjee, and the prime minister, Narendra Modi, Shah seemed to be the third most important leader in the hall of fame. The moment he entered, almost all the BJP parliamentarians and other party leaders stood up with folded hands to greet him. Shah acknowledged their greetings with folded hands as well. Then he quietly walked up and sat in the front row beside the Nationalist Congress Party chief, Sharad Pawar.

Shah, however, was not seen chatting with the Maratha strongman. He just sat there as leaders and bureaucrats walked up to him seeking to strike up a rapport. Each one of them seemed to know on which side the bread was buttered.

Holiday mode

It has been two weeks but there is still no sign of Rahul Gandhi returning from his holiday. Congressmen at all levels of the party hierarchy are getting restless. The absence of the Congress vice-president became a talking point in TV studios when Meira Kumar filed her nomination for the presidential polls. While nobody among the 17 parties supporting Kumar seemed to miss Rahul, the Congress chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, Virbhadra Singh, went on record saying that Rahul should have been around. Yet, not a day passes when Rahul does not comment on domestic political issues from his official Twitter handle. Congressmen have begun to wonder that if Rahul is so clued-in and concerned about the incidents of lynching, the farmers' plight and the GST rollout, why is he not returning home?

Second round

While Meira Kumar slugs it out with the NDA's presidential nominee, Ram Nath Kovind, the pressure is mounting on the Opposition to name its vice-presidential nominee before the NDA announces its own. The electoral college, consisting of parliamentarians from both the Houses, is heavily loaded in favour of the ruling dispensation, but some Opposition leaders feel that a contest would help them raise key political and economic issues facing the country.

While the Congress is yet to get on its feet on the matter, smaller parties who are opposed to the NDA want the former governor of West Bengal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, to contest the vice-presidential polls. They believe that his status as an upright civil servant and his close ancestral links with both Mahatma Gandhi and C Rajagopalachari would force the NDA to look for an eminent candidate as well. So far, three names have been doing the rounds - the Union urban development minister, M Venkaiah Naidu, the former Gujarat chief minister, Anandiben Patel, and the former union minister, Hukumdev Narayan Yadav.

Rare energy

KK Venugopal's appointment as attorney-general has generated a lot of interest in the legal fraternity. Some find the Narendra Modi-led government's choice a bit odd, given that it picked someone nearing 86 years in age in a country that has over five million lawyers. They feel the choice speaks volumes about the dearth of lawyers of calibre and the government's inability to find younger people who are politically acceptable. But KKV, as he is popularly called, still seems to have a rare energy that might help him give the government some relief in difficult cases.

Tongue twister

A name that is a mouthful is doing the rounds in the corridors of the human resource development ministry. It is the Indian Council of Social Science, Philosophical and Historical Research, or ICSSPHR. Following the recommendation of the Niti Aayog, the ministry is believed to be considering ICSSPHR as a single council formed by merging the Indian Council of Social Science Research, the Indian Council of Philosophical Research and the Indian Council of Historical Research. The Niti Aayog has apparently recommended the merger of the three councils, overruling the initial objections by the department of higher education in the ministry. Now the ministry is supposed to draw up a road map for the merger, involving an outline of the functions and the migration of employees.

FOOTNOTE

Unpleasant surprise

This is as real as it gets. The BJP national general secretary, Kailash Vijayvargiya,was in north Kerala recently, and he had his first brush with the violence in its political culture. Vijayvargiya was returning late in the night from a party meeting in Kannur when he saw some political workers putting up BJP flags and posters. He felt it was his duty to interact with them.

Vijayvargiya stopped his car, stepped out and introduced himself. "I'm the BJP general secretary," he said warmly, and extended his hand. Fearing some kind of danger, the workers maintained their distance. With one hand on their chest, they declared, "We are from the sangh". It was then that Vijayvargiya noticed that they were holding swords in their other hands. It was for "security", they told him.