World Cup T20 team

World Cup T20 team
Why was the Indian team for the T20 World Cup announced in a hurry when the IPL is still going on? After all, the performance in IPL could have been a good indicator as to who should be selected. It appears that the selectors were in a big hurry as they were probably worried that their favourites may not do well in the IPL and would not warrant selection.
—TR Ramaswami, via email

Long-standing issues
Since 1956, on a number of occasions, the leaders of the Maharashtra Ekikaran Samiti (MES) from Belgaum has held a dharna at the Azad Maidan in Mumbai. Every time, the Maharashtra chief minister makes it a point to meet them with an “assurance” to take up the long-pending issue of merging Belgaum and other Marathi-speaking areas of Karnataka with Maharashtra with the prime minister. And, as expected, everything is forgotten after a few weeks. The border dispute could have been easily solved during the unchallenged reign of the Congress party over the entire country, when the Opposition parties were almost a non-entity and both the states were under the undivided Congress control.
—Vineet Phadtare, via email

Dogged by controversy
Recently, minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor has been in limelight for all the wrong reasons (‘Minister may not be able to save his neck this time’, DNA, April 15). Now, he is alleged to have misused his office for his role in IPL’s Kochi franchise. Sunanda Pushkar, who is a Dubai-based  businesswoman and also a close friend of Tharoor,  is alleged to have acted as his proxy. Ever since Tharoor has taken on the job of minister of state for external affairs, controversy seems to be constantly following him.
—Jitendra Kothari, via email   
II
The recent IPL controversy is yet another nail in the coffin of what could well have been a great political career. I refer to Shashi Tharoor (‘Minister may not be able to save his neck this time’, DNA, April 15). One wonders how many fiascos about him should the public ignore? I firmly believe that all his problems are more due to him than anyone else. The twitter-gate controversy was due to him questioning his government’s political policy when he could have aided in changing it rather than tweeting against it. The IPL controversy, which has now begun to take a political tone, is again his doing. In addition, the IT raid on the offices of Modi and the BCCI clearly shows that the IT department works for the party in power.
—Rahul Mudholkar, Pune