Iceman’s Realm

Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh can be pretty tough at times. Maharashtra’s Forest Minister Patangrao Kadam and Rural Development Minister Jayant Patil learnt it the hard way when Ramesh was in Mumbai recently for a climate change debate organized by the NCP MP Supriya Sule. The presentations by experts at the event were enlightening but talks by Maharashtra politicians including Kadam and Patil lacked seriousness and depth. But soon, Jairam Ramesh swung into action. Guess what he said. Well, the Maharashtra forest department desperately needed an overhaul. He also asked Kadam and Patil how the Central funds for cleaning of the Panchaganga and Krishna rivers in the state were spent. All that Kadam and Patil did was to keep looking over each other’s shoulders.

Sri Ram Sena chief Pramod Muthalik recently got a taste of his own medicine. Just over a year after his men assaulted pub hoppers in Mangalore, unidentified youths blackened Muthalik’s face at a debate organized by a TV channel in Bangalore on the eve of Valentine’s day. Muthalik and his men were ranting against Valentine’s day celebrations and even threatened to get boys and girls going out together on V day married. However, Rama Sena workers spared the love birds on Valentine’s day. Instead they targeted Congress offices across Karnataka holding the Youth Congress responsible for the blackening.

Age may have mellowed Dr Farooq Abdullah but it has not withered his rhetoric. He breathed fire at a book launch in honour of late Dr Mohammad Sultan Khuroo. Recently, he said that despite the latest machinery and skilled manpower, doctors loot the poor and needy patients. They intentionally leave the machinery at government hospitals defunct to increase the business of private institutions. Doctors even sell sample medicine to chemists. The medicines available are filled with cow dung. He advised the doctors to emulate doctor Ali Khan, who spent from his own pocket to buy medicines for the poor. Being a trained doctor himself, the Union Minister should consider starting a model hospital or resurrecting thee nurse home that British born wife Mollie ran in Srinagar.

Not long ago, HD Deva Gowda had promised to lose his temper. But the promise was broken when the former PM called CM BS Yeddyurappa and advocate general Ashok bloody bastards.

Renuka Choudhary, it seems, is trying to keep herself as busy as she can in getting ready for the anti Telangana camp in Andhra Pradesh. The Congress leader represented Khammam constituency in the Telangana region in the Lok Sabha but lost in the parliamentary polls in May. She has been active behind the scenes in strengthening the claims of the anti Telangana group. She has even transcribed statements made by Maoists to bring out the alleged extremist link in the agitation for Telangana.

Union Minister of Home Affairs, P Chidambaram, recently told the media that he got a short response to a long letter he wrote to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee regarding the Maoist menace. Chidambaram was quite annoyed seeing that to which Buddhadeb responded that he doesn’t have the habit of reading long letters. He also doesn’t have the habit of responding to them either. Is the home minister upset about this? Well, we’re more than upset over his handling of the Telangana issue, he signed off.

When Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthananthan and CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan held hands as part of the human chain organized by the party to protest the ASEAN trade pact, it was a moment for shutterbugs. The feud between the two leaders had hit the headlines in recent times and they even refused to speak to each other at public functions. Ironically, the duo along with Prakash Karat held hands in front of the Raj Bhavan when Governor RS Gavai was making moves to implicate Vijayan in the SNC Lavalin corruption case with Achu mama’s support.

Meira Kumar is a generous host.

Talk about stabbed in the back. Former Kanakapura MP Tejaswini Sriramesh claims she is threatened by the same men who brought her into politics. DK Shivakumar present working president of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee had chosen her in 2004 after an astrologer had predicted that only a woman would defeat Deva Gowda. Now Tejaswini alleges that Shivakumar was planning to eliminate her and her family and that he worked for her defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. What a fallout!

After many a slip of tongue landed her in scrapes, UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi has decided to think before she speaks. Sometime ago, her statement on Mayawati landed her behind bars and a case under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was registered. More recently, her remark that Rahul Gandhi forced his pilot to land despite zero visibility caused a furor, with Rahul retorting that she was no weather connoisseur. So Joshi will keep her fingers on her lips. But there’s many a slip between the tongue and the lip, isn’t there?