Delhi confidential: No Holds Barred

A bureaucrat-turned-cabinet minister was at the receiving end of BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s unusual outburst Friday. Saying he had won elections six times and he wasn’t “scared” of anyone, Singh walked up to the minister in Parliament’s corridors and told him that he had been seeking an appointment with him for the last three months and was yet to get one. A visibly upset minister struggled to respond, while some other MPs sought to pacify Singh. Later, the minister invited the Kaiserganj MP who is also president of the Wrestling Federation of India, for coffee in his office.

House Praise

With Lok Sabha functioning, Speaker Om Birla has been lauded by Opposition MPs for the manner in which he runs the House. On Friday, while Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury compared him to the Pope, TMC leader Sudip Bandopadhyay made a special mention of the way Birla has brought normalcy to the House in two days. According to officials, Lok Sabha, which had functioned for just 10 hours, 11 minutes till Wednesday night, compensated and functioned for 11 hours, 3 minutes on Thursday, reducing the total loss of time to just 3 hours, 55 minutes. The productivity on Thursday was 204 per cent, the officials said. But the words of appreciation did not stop the Speaker from being strict with members. On Friday, the Speaker called out the name of Congress MP Manickam Tagore, also the party general secretary in charge of Telangana, when he was in conversation with Revanth Reddy, chief of his party’s state unit. Tagore had to apologise before he got a chance to raise a supplementary question.

Azadi to Covid

While the Centre has launched the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav to celebrate 75 years of Independence, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya sought to link it to the marathon debate on Covid-19 on Thursday. “It gives us a sense of happiness that, yesterday, till 1 am, many members of the House presented their view (on the pandemic). On the occasion of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, and after a very long time, the House made up its mind to discuss an issue with extreme seriousness. It is a coincidence that on this occasion, 75 members took part in the discussion,” Mandaviya said.