Ending the suspense, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat rang up Kerala chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan around 11 am Friday urging him to contest from his sitting seat of Malampuzha in northern Palakkad. That was the party decision, finalised at the meeting of the available politburo in New Delhi, he was told.
Unaware of the turn of events, Mr Achuthanandan’s close aides were discussing counter-strategies at Cliff House, the CM’s official residence, when the message came.
They were bent on fielding Independents from select seats to floor the rival camp leaders.
Mr Achuthanandan then told Mr Karat that the state secretary, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, should announce his candidacy and clarify that he would lead the LDF.
It was Mr Vijayan who had opposed his candidacy at the politburo and the state secretariat, and when he broke the news at the state party headquarters that the veteran was contesting, Mr Achuthanandan’s face lit up, his aides said.
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Tiwari plea to avoid DNA test rejected
age correspondent
New Delhi
March 18: The efforts of veteran Congress leader N.D. Tiwari to escape the DNA test in paternity suit failed with the Supreme Court rejecting his plea for an interim stay on the Delhi high court order asking him to give samples for DNA analysis.
The top court on February 14 also had refused to give any interim stay but left it on Tiwari to give a choice whether he would like to give blood sample, have saliva testing or hair strand examination.
The three options had been cited by Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA, fingerprinting and diagnostics for conducting the DNA test of the Congress leader Mr Tiwari before the HC, seized of a suit filed by a young man, Rohit Shekhar (31), claiming that the Congress leader had fathered him in an illicit relation with his mother more than 50-years-ago.