Off the record: April 12, 2021

Election trail

After the Kerala elections, where Congress was pitted against the CPI(M), Rahul Gandhi is expected to hit the campaign trail in West Bengal where the grand old party is an ally of the Left parties. Gandhi is expected to take part in the roadshow in Matigara-Naxalbari and Goalpokar assembly seats considered as the gateway to the northeast. Top Congress leaders have given the West Bengal campaign a miss with leaders arguing that in the initial phase, not many seats allocated to the Congress went to polls.

Sagar Kulkarni, New Delhi

Low vaccination

Amid a raging pandemic situation, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has blamed the farmers’ protests against the three farm laws for the low vaccination numbers in the state. The state government has managed to administer 16 lakh jabs. “People in Punjab were still not coming out in large numbers for the vaccination due to the massive anger prevailing against the Government of India on the issue of farm laws,” Singh told Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Sagar Kulkarni, New Delhi

Sleep disorder

The Jammu and Kashmir government’s decision to impose a night curfew in the urban areas of eight districts to check the spread of the soaring coronavirus cases sounds strange as there is no nightlife in the Valley for more than three decades. Kashmir otherwise also shuts down during the night as there are no night clubs and night partying here. Simply replicating the Mumbai model in Srinagar sounds bizarre. Better was to shut down gardens in Kashmir, where thousands of people throng daily. But then the administrators’ logic might be that the coronavirus has some kind of sleep disorder that makes it roam around during nights only and take rest during the day!

Zulfikar Majid, Srinagar

Zero gravity

It’s fun to move in zero gravity, says Wing Commander (Retd) Rakesh Sharma, the only Indian astronaut to reach space. “It was fun to move in space in zero gravity, doing somersaults, and impossible things which can not be done while on Earth, but all with a lot of hardships and training,” he said at an online event hosted by the Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai and Russian Centre for Science and Culture, to commemorate the first human space flight of Yuri Gagarin. Reliving his 1984 mission to space, he said, “I was excited to hear of the achievement of Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight while I was just 10th grader.” “Now we are going to colonise Space soon but while doing so, we must not repeat mistakes we have committed in developing earth, like pollution, overexploitation of earth natural resources,” said Sharma, a former pilot. In April 1984, Sharma, as part of an Indo-USSR mission, became the first citizen of India to go into space when he flew aboard the Soviet rocket Soyuz T-11 blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.

Mrityunjay Bose, Mumbai

Witch-hunt?

With most of the prominent faces having left the party, the J&K’s People’s Democratic Party has already crumbled. The former Chief Minister and PDP President, Mehbooba Mufti doesn’t seem to be enjoying much support beyond her own family. Amid a massive crackdown of the investigative agencies on the “leftover” PDP leaders, even the family of Mehbooba is not being spared. In the latest, her elderly ailing mother, who is also the wife of the former Union Minister late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, has been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate. The Mufti family calls it a ‘witch-hunt’. The Mufti family says that the questioning which started with Mehbooba is now being extended to her mother. They call it the sequel of the “The Wolf and the Lamb story.”

Zulfikar Majid, Srinagar