2 enclosures for guests at IAF’s At Home event leads to heartburn
For the first time in memory, the guests at the Indian Air Force’s At Home function, held at IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Rakesh Bhadauria’s house Wednesday, were segregated into two camps. One enclosure consisted of three-star officers, defence attaches of other countries in India, senior bureaucrats and politicians besides the awardees and senior veterans such as former IAF chiefs. The second enclosure consisted of journalists, many veterans and two-star and below officers. This led to a lot of heartburn among the invitees as such segregation was happening for the first time. The At Home Wednesday evening also did not see any cabinet ministers of the Narendra Modi government or any opposition leader. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, attended it and so did National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Doval was seen having a long conversation with Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh. Army Chief General Bipin Rawat was out of station.
Old guard vs new guard, Twitter exchange behind Gaurav Gogoi ouster
Further exposing its lack of clarity and its internal mess, the Congress Tuesday removed Lok Sabha MP from Assam, Gaurav Gogoi, as its general secretary in-charge of Tripura, while re-instating Luizinho Faleiro within 24 hours. Faleiro has been in the midst of a controversy after former Tripura Congress chief Pradyot Debbarma quit the party recently and made it a point to blame him. After Gogoi’s quick demotion, the buzz in the party is that the old guard versus new guard rift has been at play again. Gogoi has been very much a part of the new guard, close to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Faleiro, who is known to be close to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her trusted aides, is learnt to have pulled the strings as soon as the appointment of Gogoi was announced. Not wanting him to sulk, the high command let him have his way. Incidentally, once the announcement of Gogoi being made in-charge of Tripura was made, Debbarma was quick to tweet welcoming the decision, to which the former responded very warmly, saying both of them “put people first”. This also did not go down well with the high command, which perhaps felt the two were cosying up. With Gogoi divested of Tripura duties, Debbarma put out a very ‘I told you so’ tweet, blaming this abrupt change on a “systematic problem in the party”.
BJP in demand in other nations
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in big demand with political parties in other countries. After a BJP delegation went to China on the invitation of the Communist Party of China (CPC) last August, another delegation is preparing to visit South Korea in the first week of November. Headed by general secretary Muralidhar Rao, the delegation is scheduled to meet South Korea’s top leadership, visit a few companies, and study infrastructural growth and government schemes. Yet another BJP delegation will visit Singapore under the leadership of general secretary Bhupendra Yadav later next month.
(Contributors: Snehesh Alex Philip, Amrita Dutta, Ruhi Tewari and Shanker Arnimesh)