All off record when Chidambaram dons his jacket

New Delhi, Nov 22 : Home Minister P. Chidambaram can be at his expansive best when he is entertaining. But then his revelations are strictly off the record - if he is donning a jacket and pant and not his trademark veshti and shirt!

At a high tea organised for scribes on the home beat as well as for those who covered him when he was finance minister, Chidambaram played the perfect host with delectable goodies, mostly from southern India. The sharp as nails minister let his hair down for once, took occasional jibes at reporters and also showed his irreverent side.

He dwelt on what was his high point during a recent US visit and made suggestions for television channels seemingly carrying out parallel investigation in the Headley-Rana terror plot probe.

Unfortunately, none of it could be reported. The reason? He was not in his trademark white veshti and shirt and was wearing a blue jacket instead. At the outset he made it clear: "All off the record, I have my jacket on!"

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Winter session marks a thaw

It is an open secret that Minister of State for Railways E. Ahamed and his boss Mamata Banerjee have not been on the best of terms. But they seem to be warming up to each other with the beginning of winter.

Many believe Didi's unhappiness stemmed from the fact that the Indian Union Muslim League, to which Ahamed belongs, fielded a candidate in the Trinamool Congress chief's South Kolkata constituency during the general election.

But things may have changed. The buzz in the ministry is that Ahamed has made peace and even won her confidence by offering full support to her party in the recent by-elections in West Bengal.

The two were seen sharing some light moments when parliament opened for the winter session. For Ahamed, perhaps the diplomatic skills honed from his stint as minister of stateff foreign affairs in UPA-1 came in handy.

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Small is beautiful, Tharoor shows how

When the foreign minister of a tiny West African country comes to town, does anyone notice? Not the media, which missed out on a golden chance to watch Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor turn on the charm offensive - sometimes in French!

Away from the media spotlight, Tharoor was quite happy to court Cape Verde's Jose Brito, who headed a delegation of two, for talks and lunch at the stately Hyderabad House. He fluently conversed in French with the visitors.

When Tharoor offered Indian help in the health sector to Cape Verde that has a population of only 450,000, Brito said he wanted Indian help in the IT sector and a line of credit to buy computers for each of the 8,000 teachers in his country.

And when lunch was over, Tharoor saw to it that his guests partook 'paan' (betel leaves), saying this was one delicacy Indians didn't export - only used for their own digestion.

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The Shivraj Patil memoirs - sans spice

With all the time on his hands after his unceremonious exit as home minister following the Mumbai terror attacks, Shivraj Patil is busy writing his memoirs. The handwritten manuscript is around 1,000 pages long and is expected to be published next year.

Patil had drawn flak on many occasions for changing his trendy 'bandgalas'. When Delhi was rocked by serial blastsb last year, he is said to have changed his suits thrice on the day.

A close aide says the memoirs would reveal his take on the episode. But the book, like the man himself, is not expected to reveal any spicy bits about his tenure as home minister or as Lok Sabha speaker.

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Shhh, Jharkhand polls coming up

Sensing a chance to reap some dividends in Jharkhand after a season of defeats, the Bharatiya Janata Party has apparently sought an assurance from its vocal brigade to refrain from speaking out of turn till the assembly polls get over in the state.

The voluble Shatrughan Sinha, MP from Patna, who has given jitters to the party leadership in the past with his remarks, has gone into a shell, telling journalists that his views on the party's presidential post would be known only after the election results.

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AIIMS has sympathetic minister in Azad

Journos hoping for controversial statements on the premier AIIMS from Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad should be disappointed. Unlike his predecessor Anbumani Ramadoss, Azad nicely dodged questions about the institute's current director.

At an informal get together recently, Azad was asked about current director R.C. Deka's reported unhappiness with the faculty. But he chose to expound instead on why the focus should be on improving the institute.

"AIIMS is like a railway station. People from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal come for treatment here. AIIMS is overburdened," he exclaimed.

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Blessings from elsewhere?

It's rare for a union minister to speak out against a governor. So the slugfest between Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and Punjab Governor S.F. Rodrigues has evoked curiosity in political circles. It is said that the latter has the blessings of some powerful people.

Rodrigues, who is also administrator of Chandigarh, has made allegations against Bansal and union minister Ambika Soni regarding allotment of land to a school society in Chandigarh. The ministers denied the charges.

Rodrigues had apparently courted controversy over some of his utterances as army chief but now Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had come to his rescue then too. Rodrigues, who hails from Goa, had served as army chief when Pawar was defence minister in the early 90s.

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IAF vice chief testing waters?

Was there a design behind the Indian Air Force (IAF) vice chief Air Marshal P.K. Barbora's outburst against the political establishment for allegedly stalling the procurement of military hardware?

Many do believe that the political establishment has been the biggest obstacle to the modernisation of Indian armed forces, despite what A.K. Antony has been proclaiming since he became defence minister three years ago.

Perhaps what he was referring to was the proposal the IAF has quietly floated to purchase some 50 basic trainers. The force has said it is not satisfied with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, whose HPT-32 trainers it now deploys but which have been grounded due to apparent mechanical defects.

His outburst was perhaps the first salvo to gauge the government's response to the IAF proposal.