Glasshouse of the week

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URGICAL STRIKE II
A new committee set up by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has not gone down well with South Block's defence bureaucrats. The Raksha Mantri's advisory committee on MoD capital projects, a 13-member panel set up on February 7 and headed by former secretary Vinay Sheel Oberoi, includes retired bureaucrats and armed forces brass and has six months to submit a report on the MoD's sluggish pace of defence equipment acquisitions and development programmes. Clearly, a can of worms no one wants opened.
Khan vs Modi in China

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Chinese social media account on the Twitter-like Weibo, launched with fanfare in May 2015 as a direct channel to talk to China, has fallen into disuse, coinciding with a difficult period in ties. The last post was in October, when the PM wished Xi Jinping after the party congress. In 2017, only a dozen messages were posted. With only 184,000 followers, the PM is now far behind China's new idol Aamir Khan, who has 1 million Weibo fans.

No Time for the House
On February 9, a special Kerala cabinet meeting couldn't be held as seven ministers were absent. Three days later, CM Pinarayi Vijayan warned: skipping cabinet meets would lead to ejection from the ministry.
The same day, in Assam, the assembly was adjourned as no minister was present for the afternoon session. Deputy speaker Dilip Kumar Paul, who was running the House, had to issue a warning to the offenders.
Meals Apart
Despite the success in recent bypolls, the Congress in Rajasthan is not a united house. When state chief Sachin Pilot took the winning candidates to meet Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, former chief minister Ashok Gehlot proceeded on a vacation to Jaisalmer. The day Pilot hosted his annual 'Kisan Lunch' in Delhi, Gehlot shared breakfast with former president Pratibha Patil and played host to his former ministerial colleagues. It's now for Rahul Gandhi to decide who finally takes on CM Vasundhara Raje in the assembly elections in December.
Saffron star
The RSS has added Ajay Devgn to its list of sympathisers. Senior pracharak Sunil Deshpande gifted the filmstar a copy of a coffee-table book, RSS: A Saga of Courage and Dedication, in Mumbai on February 5. The RSS will now take the book, considered a dossier of its work, to other prominent citizens across the country.
Riotous assembly

Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik attempted to address a joint session in the assembly through a cacophony of derisive hooting, wolf whistles, sloganeering and shouted accusations from an opposition determined to protest what it sees as the breakdown of law and order in the state. Naik was stoic. Faced with paper 'missiles', balloons and even hurled potatoes, he continued to deliver a 38-page speech over 90 minutes. Naik's address heralded the start of a month-long budget session, but the assembly seemed in no mood to listen. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath accused the opposition of attempting to "hijack" the session, claiming its conduct reflected the manner in which previous governments ran the state. For its part, the opposition vowed to continue to act on its responsibility to criticise the government and point out its failures.

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