Vis-a-Vis

SONIA GANDHI Congress president versus L.K. ADVANI BJP president

"The NDA government discriminated against Bihar on all fronts. People suffered because of this."

"If we are blamed for trying to free Bihar from the misgovernance of the past many years, then it is all right."

EPILOGUE: It is the same old actors and dialogues in Act II of the Bihar poll drama.

VOICES

"All these queries do not mean anything to me. You cannot make me break my vow of silence."

Buta Singh, Bihar Governor, on repeated questions on the Bihar Assembly dissolution

"Everyone has his own political ambitions and I am not an exception. What's wrong in desiring a position at the top?"

Narayan Rane, Maharashtra revenue minister, on speculation that he was eyeing the chief minister's post

"Mehfil tumhari kabhi kum na hogi, lekin afsos us mein hum na honge (Your show will go on, but sadly, I won't be a part of it)."

Shatrughan Sinha, BJP leader, when asked why he is not participating in NDA's poll campaign in Bihar

"Living in with someone makes much more sense than marriage."

Mallika Sarabhai, dancer and activist

"Don't stand under the sun waiting for me. I am not going to say anything."

Sourav Ganguly, former Indian cricket captain, to newspersons outside his Kolkata residence

THE BUZZ OF THE WEEK

The CPI(M) may wear its animus towards corporate India on its sleeve but that did not prevent Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury from meeting, among others, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, Mukesh Ambani and Swraj Paul last week.

PICTURE SPEAK

Jupiter Mills, which was sold by NTC

MUMBAI The Bombay High Court's order striking down the sale of land belonging to five NTC textile mills for Rs 2,020 crore will affect the city's real estate prices. Less than five months ago, state-owned NTC had sold these mills to bidders like Indiabulls. Following the judgement NTC may have to return the money it raised through the sale of mill land and bidders will have to shelve their plans to develop it. If these projects had gone through, prices of real estate downtown would have come down. With this ruling, the rise in prices in the suburbs will continue and central Mumbai will see more vertical structures.

The court said the sale violated a Supreme Court order and ruled that one-third of the land should be used for low-cost housing, another one-third as open spaces and the rest by mill owners for commercial development. This ruling is applicable only to the NTC mills and not the other commercial spaces that have been sold to developers. Among them is ITC's cigarette factory that is now a five-star hotel and Glaxo's set-up in Worli where residential structures will come up.

-By Malini Bhupta

DELHI External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh has cracked the whip on his errant mandarins out on foreign junkets on some pretext or the other. Irked with the proposals piling up in his office of a number of joint secretaries wanting to go to New York on flimsy grounds, the minister went on a disciplining mission. And the venue he chose was the UN. With the General Assembly in session in New York, hordes of officers from Delhi had descended on the Big Apple.

Natwar objected to this practice and one officer was even given marching orders and told to pack his bags and return to Delhi, with a strong noting on the official file. At that stage Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran intervened and requested the minister to allow the officer to stay till the meeting ended. Natwar acquiesced, but on his return he has been busy drawing up new guidelines to end the foreign junket syndrome. .

-By Saurabh Shukla

NAMED: Sania Mirza, as one of the 10 people capable of changing the world, by London's intellectual weekly New Statesman.

INVITED: Arjun Sengupta, UN independent expert on human rights and extreme poverty, by the US Government, to study acute poverty in that country and suggest solutions.

DELETED: The name of Mohammad Shahabuddin, RJD MP from Siwan, from the voters' list. He has eight non-bailable warrants pending against him.

PLACED: second, Viswanathan Anand, in the World Chess Championship in San Luis in Argentina, after Vaselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

CHOSEN: P.J. George Martin, for the Most Promising Artist Award, instituted by Art India, Mumbai, and Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Delhi.

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