With blessing from Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh has been sent to the rural development ministry. In the true sense, it is a promotion of sorts for him –he is going to play a crucial role in seeing Rahul as the prime minister. The party is soon going to place the Food Security Bill to the Parliament and Jairam is working out the details. Rahul has also placed significant responsibility to Salman Khurshid’s shoulders and he is already working on the Communal Violence Bill. He is considered fairly honest and has been put in place of Moily and has been given the extra charge of the minority affairs ministry.

The complaint by Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan seems to be a valid one that even he got the news of bomb blasts in Mumbai late. That’s because the signal from the affected towers were jammed with immediate effect. It is worth noting that before the mobile revolution, the police officials would get all information through communication and command ISPW, that is, Interstate Police Wireless. The top brass of police and intelligence agencies were connected to the network, too. But with the communication revolution and the usage of mobile phones, the agencies are relying too much on them. This is despite knowing that terrorist outfits that the capacity of hacking and listening to these conversations. It is time that our police and intelligence agencies rely more on their own communication network for information.

The Mumbai air still reeks of the explosion, and ammonium nitrate seems to have seeped into people’s lungs, all breaths are still connected to the IID and at such a time and a vote mercenary like Digvijay Singh is still trying to spread panic among people. With the name of Hindu terrorism, these are the same people who were against SIMI being banned. After 9/11, when SIMI was banned in 2001, it slowly developed into a new outfit, the Indian Mujahiddin, whose connections were traced to the local blasts in Bengaluru, Varanasi, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Mumbai. The same outfit is said to be behind the Mumbai blasts, so be is Taukeer, Safdar Narogi, Abu Basheer or Kayamuddin Kapadia, mostly it was joined by educated young professionals. Sixty of its terrorists are still languishing in the Sabarmati prison, and despite all this, our intelligence agencies don’t have sufficient and solid dossier against the IM. Isn’t that a little surprising?

Moving around like vagabonds, fresh out of the oven, this column Mirch masala that have been urging readers to think about new issues every week for the past 11 years will be going for a small hiatus for two weeks. Despite being pit of India I will be in your thoughts. Catch you in July! Till then, so long!

A group of Congress leaders is pushing the cause of investigating the parrots who are the heart and soul of Baba. For instance, he is fond of Sahara’s Subroto Roy and is frequently seen taking the company’s chartered flights. And now that he is a proclaimed billionaire, why should there be any qualms about taking these flights? One of the builder mafia’s Sudhakar Shetty is a devotee of baba. It is said that about 20,000 people from Mumbai had come for baba’s fast from the city on Shetty’s expense. Recently, Sahara has also bought a five-star hotel at the Hyde Park area of Central London for Rs 2,000 crore and the Congress is trying to rake up the issue and investigate the deal.

Tata may have got a clean chit from the CBI, but the court decision is still pending. The sword is still hanging above Anil Ambani. It may be remembered that Anil’s company is allegedly under debt from a prominent Indian bank for Rs 65,000 crore.

When the BJP leaders went to the President for the Ramdev issue, the President broke protocol and directly addressed Advani and said, “I carefully go through the papers you send me and forward it to the concerned ministries and follow them up personally in places so that action can be taken.” Actually Advani had commented somewhere that “the President is indifferent about most issues.”

Baba had come with political preparedness for the fast. He had full plans that when the fast is broken at Ramlila Grounds, he will announce the formation of a political party. He had even sent an application to the Election Commission for the logo of the party. BJP plans to have 543 nominations for the 2014 elections. Thanks to the UPA’s Chidambaram and Sibal that BJP got a shot in the arm otherwise Ramdev’s nominees would have come cracking on the party’s nominees.

Sonia got to know about the violent ways in which the police came down upon the fasting crowd at 8 am in the morning. Two BJP leaders got to know about it at 7 in the morning. Among prominent BJP leaders, only Nitin Gadkari saw the event live on news channels.

A clear difference is ideology could be seen between Manmohan Singh and Sonia regarding the Ramdev issue. For one, Sonia was not okay with the ministers being sent to the airport for the Baba’s welcome. On the other hand, the PMO didn’t even deem is fit to consult with her before sending central ministers for the same. Sonia was not in favour of any strict action against baba, while Chidambaram, Sibal and Pranab were successful in convincing the PM that without police action it would not be possible to make baba break his fast. Sibal and Chidambaram argued like lawyers, who are hardly known for their making-up ways.