Soon after primary and secondary education minister, Tanveer Sait, was caught glancing at sleazy videos on his mobile phone, a scribe called a Congress MLC for his reaction. The MLC, however, returned the call late at night as he was attending a function, but was keen on eliciting a frank opinion on the incident. When told that the minister was in deep trouble, the legislator shot back: “I know an input editor of a new TV channel who is married but has links with another anchor. They have recorded a porn video when they were together. The media is not above board. How can you speak about us? Now, let me ask you one question. Do you watch a woman when she comes close to you?” And when the journo replied in affirmative, the MLC remarked “there ends the matter. Mr Sait did nothing wrong. He was sitting on dias for three hours, so he checked his phone to see what was being circulated on his WhatsApp group.” He paused before cautiously adding “Brother, whatever I told you is completely off-the-record. I hope you have not recorded my statement,” only to send the reporter into peals of laughter.
No more holidays, please
If Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, K B Koliwad, has his way, the state will have fewer holidays to mark birth anniversaries of eminent personalities. For, he did not mince words while resorting to some plain speaking about such ‘Jayanthis’ and holidays associated with them in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Speaking at Tipu Jayanthi celebrations held in Vidhana Soudha, he lauded the government for organizing celebrations to mark birth anniversaries of great leaders but asked Mr Siddaramaiah not to declare public holidays on such occasions. “People enjoy the holidays rather than remember such great souls” was his swipe followed a piece of advice: organize functions an hour before office hours to help employees return to their desks soon after the event. Will Mr Koliwad emulate his predecessor, Kagodu Thimmappa, in embarrassing the government with his candid remarks?
Cops on full alert
Call it a classic example of the idiom, better late than never, as cops are on high alert outside the gates of Vidhana Soudha soon after they stumbled upon Rs. 1.97 crores being ferried by advocate Siddarath in his car recently. These overzealous policemen, however, are getting on the nerves of everyone entering through the west gate of the state secretariat. Tempers are running high a vehicles wait in a serpentine queue for a dozen policemen to scan every two-wheeler and four-wheeler for a similar cache of currency notes. And when they find an advocate behind the wheel, the cops step up their search, leaving others in the queue fretting and fuming over the long wait. The cops, however, have passed the buck to the Income Tax department rather than dig for details of how Siddarth managed to stash so many bundles of currency in his hatch-back!
Contributed by Bhaskar Hegde, B. Aravinda Shetty and Shyam Sundar Vattam
