Dinner diplomacy fails

The brouhaha over leader of the opposition LK Advani not attending the dinner hosted by prime minister Manmohan Singh, in honour of outgoing Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, came back to haunt the Congress on Wednesday.

While Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan attacked LK Advani on his giving the dinner a miss, she was hard put to explain why others, notably UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, leader of the house Pranab Mukherjee and even parliamentary affairs minister Vayalar Ravi did not attend the dinner.

“The Congress president is busy with the campaign and could not make it, but Advani, being leader of the opposition should have attended, since he was in Delhi on Tuesday night,” she said. “He has violated the sanctity of the constitutional post that he holds,” she said.

That being said, the sparse attendance was a matter of concern for the government, with the only bright spark being Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh who specially flew in for a few hours for the dinner and attended it with his wife. “We wish that the timing of the dinner had been a little better, then attendance could have been good,” said a Congress minister who was away.

The dinner was catered to by Bengali food specialists Oh Calcutta, an outlet in Delhi. “Special Bengali dishes had been ordered and the Speaker appreciated the gesture and the food,” said a source in the PMO.