Stop press

Ordinarily, the government would have been happy to play up the announcement of a pilot scheme for dealer portability for LPG cylinder holders, since this answers a long-standing consumer demand. But Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily was visibly keen to keep the press conference as short as possible. The reason: he realised that the reason for the packed attendance was to question him on the impending diesel and LPG price rise and swamp the aam aadmi-friendly announcement. So instead of lingering to take questions and make comments on the sidelines, he spent about 15 minutes at the conference before leaving in a hurry.