Acting like a Speaker, Minister B. Ramanath Rai at a meeting here on Saturday did not allow two legislators to speak much. Though Ivan D’Souza, MLC raised the subject of schools asking parents to submit Aadhaar card details to issue hall tickets for their children, Mr. Rai ensured that the MLC did not speak much on it. Mr. D’Souza wanted to take the discussion on Shiradi ghat to a logical end, but the Minister skipped it saying he will visit the area with presspersons soon to see what exactly was going on there. Whenever the MLC rose to raise other subjects the Minister ensured that he was not given a chance on the pretext that discussion only on subjects listed in the agenda is allowed.
J.R. Lobo, MLA, Mangaluru City South, attended the meeting late. When he wanted to raise some issues, the Minister constantly maintained that those subjects had been discussed. Finally, the MLA managed to get some time to speak on an issue related to power connection for the poor in the city.
‘Heated’ discussion
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy generates quite some heat with his straightforward talks. On Saturday, Mr. Swamy, literally, found it hard to counter the heat in the humid atmosphere at an engineering college’s auditorium in Moodbidri. The two air coolers on the side brought him little relief.
While answering a question from a journalism student about how a journalist should function, Mr. Swamy asked the young student to be objective in her reports and not be carried away by the pulls and pressures in the newsroom. He then pointed to a report in a national newspaper that had misquoted him. “I have issued a notice of defamation and sought a compensation of Rs. 50 crore. If I get the compensation, I will donate it to the college for installation of air conditioners,” he said, and the audience erupted in laughter.
Praising sky-high
It is common for organisers of any function to praise the chief guests on the dais. But sometimes the praise could embarrass the chief guests. A case in point was the inauguration of the training programme for students and programme officers of Youth Red Cross wings of colleges in Udupi district at the Poornaprajna College here on Saturday.
While welcoming the chief guests, the Chairman of State unit of Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), Basrur Rajeev Shetty, was over-generous in his praise of Deputy Commissioner R. Vishal. Finally when Mr. Vishal rose to speak after inaugurating the function, he said, “Mr. Shetty, next time when you call me for function, just say, ‘I welcome Mr. Vishal, Deputy Commissioner.’ That will be enough,” to applause and laughter from the audience.
RAVIPRASAD KAMILA, GANESH PRABHU and RAGHAVA M.
