Siddharth Nath Singh

Leaders of at least 26 Opposition parties will converge at a hotel in Bengaluru on July 17-18 as part of their efforts to present a united front against the BJP govt in the Centre

On Wednesday, Siddharth Nath Singh, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national secretary and spokesperson for the day, was spoilt for choice. It had been a good couple of days for the Narendra Modi government as well as the party and Singh faced a problem of plenty - whether to highlight the US-India defence agreement and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, the India-US strategic dialogue and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, the reduced prices of pulses or the decision to raise minimum wages for unskilled contract workers and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Eventually, the issue of price of pulses, politically the most emotive, as also the poor and worker-friendly step of increasing minimum wages took precedence as the party congratulated Jaitley for his efforts to bring the prices of pulses down. However, Singh soon found his efforts were a waste as television journalists were interested only in getting reactions to Justice S N Dhingra's inquiry report into the land deals in Haryana