Municipality first, country later

Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Choudhury Mohan Jatua has been feeling out of sorts for a long while, pleading with his boss Ambika Soni for a more meaty role in the ministry. When Soni finally asked him to head the Indian delegation to Cannes, Jatua was over the moon and asked party chief Mamata Banerjee for permission to go ahead. Banerjee refused and told him that he needed to pay attention to the municipal elections in West Bengal and to go and start working in his district in the South 24 Parganas — she has told him he needn’t spend too much time in the Capital and has to go and work for the party in the state.