Alarm bells in Gandhi family
On the day of the oath taking ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team, some Congress leaders were asking around if BJP chief Amit Shah would be taking oath, and, if yes, then what portfolio he would get. Obviously, they were doing this at the behest of the grand old party’s Gandhi Parivar. It seems alarm bells have started ringing, with the Enforcement Directorate again pursuing Robert Vadra, husband of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. The Gandhi family was worried that Amit Shah would get the Finance Ministry which controls all the major enforcement agencies and income tax department. However, Shah became Home Minister and as a BJP leader said, “It does not matter where Amit Shah is. Even while sitting in the North Block, he will have his say in all the ministries. So, the Gandhi family’s fears about ShahJi are rightly placed.”
Minister Number 56 applauded
Some of the loudest applause at Narendra Modi’s oath taking ceremony was reserved for a 64-year-old frail man with unkempt hair and beard, Pratap Chandra Sarangi, Minister Number 56. He was later designated as the Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Minister of State for Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries.
A first-time MP from Balasore in Odisha, Sarangi is known as the Modi of the state. Sarangi contested the 2009 Odisha Assembly elections as an Independent despite getting a BJP ticket. This was not because he had fallen out with the BJP, but because he lost his party ticket while travelling by a public bus. Sarangi is known as an austere political activist, a maverick and a plain talker. At 28, Sarangi went to the Ramakrishna Mission at Belur Math to pursue spiritual salvation and met Swami Atmasthananda who asked him whether he had any dependants. When he said he had an old and widowed mother who depended on him, he was advised to look after her. After that, he decided not to marry. His mother died last year.
Politically active in coastal Odisha, Sarangi campaigned on a bicycle and defeated the state’s richest candidates facing him—Congress’ Navajyoti Patnaik (worth Rs 104 crore), and incumbent BJD MP Rabindra Jena (Rs 72 crore). In his election affidavit, Sarangi declared moveable assets of Rs 1.5 lakh and immovable assets of Rs 15 lakh. His sources of income are pension and agriculture. For long, Sarangi has been actively working in anti-liquor movements and education sector. He has opened Samrkara Kendras in tribal villages under the Gana Shiksha Mandir Yojana in Balasore and Mayurbhanj districts.
Hackers serve beef
When the new ministers were taking oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday, some mischievous elements hacked the Delhi BJP website and “served’ on its homepage a post on a beef dish. It was accompanied with the message: Hacked by Shadow_V1P3R. The homepage showed the picture of a beef dish with “Beef Fry’ written under it. The hackers replaced the word BJP with “beef” everywhere on the website. The rest of the content on the homepage remained untouched. The website was restored after some time.
Baby named after Modi
A Muslim woman in Gonda (Uttar Pradesh) named her newly born son “Narendra Damodardas Modi” but was forced to change the name to “Mohd Altaf Alam Modi”. The mother, Mehnaaz Begum, said that there was considerable pressure on her from society in general and her community in particular which made her change the name.“Some family members refused to participate in the ceremonies that take place after childbirth and so I decided not to encourage any more controversies and change his name,” she said. “The baby still has ‘Modi’ in his name,” she added.
However, there is some controversy over the date of the birth of the child. Mehnaaz had earlier claimed that her son was born on 23 May, the day the Lok Sabha election results were declared. But some doctors at the hospital the baby was born said that it was born on 12 May and the mother had changed his date of birth “to get popularity.”