By IANS,
New Delhi : God helps those who help themselves. And that’s what cricketer-turned-MP Navjot Singh Sidhu seems to be doing after suddenly finding that few in his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its ally Akali Dal are batting for him.
Sidhu, the BJP MP from Amritsar and a well known face from Punjab, has been campaigning hard on his own. Apparently he doesn’t have much of a taker in Deputy Chief Minister and Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal.
True to the Punjabi spirit, he is undeterred. The man who also appears on a laughter show on television has issued advertisements in the media to highlight the things he has done for people in his constituency.
Amritsar being a holy city, may be god is listening!
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Pawar-for-PM slogan pales
There don’t seem to be too many takers for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) slogan “Pawar for PM”.
The Maharashtra Congress has made it clear that the party would neither lose nor gain much by aligning with the NCP, which is headed by the veteran Sharad Pawar.
Now even the Shiv Sena seems to be turning away. While announcing its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, party leader Udhav Thackeray was asked about supporting Pawar as prime minister.
Thackeray said his party wants to support a PM bothered about the country’s security rather than the Indian Premier League’s security – an obvious sarcastic reference to Pawar’s affinity to cricket.
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Journo questions CEC, runs for cover
At a media meet with the full bench of the Election Commission in Kolkata, a journalist from a television channel wanted to know if the poll panel was divided in its stand on BJP’s Varun Gandhi.
CEC N. Gopalaswamy shot back: “Is your channel running such a story?”
“Yes,” said the journalist.
“Are you from? (the name of the channel)?”
Again, he said: “Yes”.
“And do you know it’s a completely wrong story? How do you manage to get such wrong information?” Gopalaswami went on.
The reporter could barely manage a faint ‘thank you’ before running for cover.
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Congress sings a different tune – on phone
Until recently, they would all have their favourite songs playing as the ring tone on their mobiles. But now a call to most Congress leaders in Chandigarh sounds the same.
The “Jai Ho” bug has bitten most of them.
They have changed their ring tone to the popular Oscar-winning song by A.R. Rahman after its rights were bought by the Congress party. The lyrics have been changed to show what the party had done for the people.