After returning from her Tokyo visit, chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Friday held a meeting of her ministers amid heavy speculation that it was in connection with the circle rates issue, which is threatening to snowball into a major controversy between lieutenant governor and her. However, officials maintained that the outcome of Tokyo visit was discussed at the meeting, which lasted for about three hours.

Even as several thousand devotees thronged nearly 40 ghats along the Yamuna river to celebrate Chhath Puja on Friday, there were also many who celebrated the puja while standing in artificial and makeshift water bodies in various localities of the city. The fact that the river itself is far away from their homes and also that its water is not clean seemed to have forced them to celebrate the festival “indoors”.

Rajasthani food is unique in the sense that for a region that traditionally grows few vegetables, its cuisine — mainly based on pulses and meat — is simply delicious. In no other part of the country will one find so many uses for pulses and of course, so many types of chillies.

While the adage “as American as apple pie” is used for everything traditional in the US, it was in fact in Europe that sweet and savoury pies were perfected. For places that had long winters, pies were ideal as they were traditionally made with leftovers. They were bunged into the oven after the day’s cooking was done and allowed to cook to perfection in the residual heat of the oven.

Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s endorsement of Gujarat as a tourist destination is attracting thousands of tourists to the Sasan Gir Wildlife Sanctuary. The forest department has doubled the daily permit quotas for entry to the sanctuary to meet the heavy tourist rush. Officials said all hotels and resorts in the area are booked till mid-November and credited Bachchan’s promotion of the state as the reason for the huge tourist inflow.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh wants reformed diesel policy as he feels that the real beneficiaries of diesel subsidy are owners of sports utility vehicles (SUV), which emit more carbon than non diesel ones. The minister also dismissed notions that electric cars would help in reducing carbon emission.
Speaking at a UN function the minister termed use of SUVs in countries like India as “criminal.”

Noting that India is “most vulnerable country” to climate change, environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday said the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) was “put together” by experts who thought “they knew what the country knows best.” The minister pitched for involving common people in drafting policies in that regard.

Following an all-out attack by the Opposition on the 2G spectrum controversy, Union law and justice minister M. Veerappa Moily came out in defence of telecom minister A. Raja on Friday.

Tamil Nadu has posed a big challenge for the Centre and the Congress high command on the issue of controversial 2G spectrum allocation and the role of telecom minister A. Raja in it. Now, they would either have to defend or disown him inside and outside Parliament. This is because the issue is uniting the Opposition whose target is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Alleging that the Congress had surrendered before its alliance partner, the DMK, the main Opposition BJP on Friday said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must reply whether his office gave assent to 2G spectrum allocation without auction as suggested by telecom minister A. Raja. The party said Mr Raja had made PM a “co-accused” in the scam by suggesting that he kept the PM informed of every decision he took during 2G Spectrum allocation.