During his reply to the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while complimenting first-time MPs, suggested a novel step — of devoting one day to interventions only by new MPs, as they had fresh ideas and seemed more energised. Ironically, it was at this juncture, and a good 40 minutes after the PM’s speech had begun, that two first-time BJP MPs from Delhi — Ramesh Bidhuri and Maheish Girri — walked in and sheepishly slunk into their seats.

MPLADS bonhomie

Lok Sabha BJP MP Rama Devi (from Sheohar, Bihar) raised the issue of higher funds for all MPs under the local area development scheme, MPLADS, from the existing ₹5 crore/year. With the Prime Minister including the village adoption scheme, Adarsh Gram Yojana, under the scheme, MPs have been complaining of paucity of funds. No wonder, then, Devi’s suggestion was greeted by loud thumping of desks across the board. Way to go!

Pragmatic in Defence

Almost three days after the Union Budget for 2016-17 was presented, defence minister Manohar Parrikar clarified the allocations made for the sector. While enumerating what the Budget has given to the defence sector and fielding questions from journalists on budgetary allocations being reduced, the Minister said “I need money. You can pretend to be rich but you cannot pretend to have money.”

Only for solitaires

Online jeweller Carat Lane is still hopeful of getting Titan on board as an investor. But Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director at Titan, is quite clear that it would source only solitaires from the ecommerce player and restrict its relationship to that of a vendor. “Mithun, the promoter of Carat Lane, sells us solitaires and there is no proposal to invest in his company,” asserted Bhat.

Sticking by rules

When Rajiv Bansal, CFO of taxi aggregator Ola, was asked how Infoscions reacted to his decision to put in his papers on October 11, 2015, on the very day that he had joined the company 16 years ago, Bansal said he received congratulatory messages all day for 16 years of service rendered and by late evening everyone was asking why he was quitting. “There was one interesting message on the Intranet from an Infoscion about my serving the mandatory notice period which read: I am glad that even the CFO has to serve the notice period,” recalled Bansal, whose last day was December 31, 2015.

For more tribunals

What is preventing fast-tracking the case involving former liquor baron Vijay Mallya and lenders at the debt recovery tribunal is not lack of intent but lack of tribunals. It is not just this particular case but several others that keep on dragging because the Bengaluru region has just one DRT. Lawyers at the tribunal say that given the increasing number of such cases, there should be at least three more in Bengaluru.

Aggressive journalists

Mamata Banerjee declared her party's candidate list on Friday. But she could not help avoid the fight that broke out at her home after that. No, it wasn't one between her party members.

Rather, it was between journalists. Scribes began to fight amongst themselves to get a copy of the party's candidates list.

The fight between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ reached such proportions that some senior MLAs of the party had to intervene and stop it. Observed an MLA wryly: “Even those who have not got tickets did not display such high levels of aggression as you journalists did.”

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