Third Eye: Cracking jokes at the newlywed, same team, just reassigned seats & a step to endcaste biases

Recently, MPs couldn't resist teasing South Bengaluru MP Tejasvi Surya, who was attending Parliament just a day or two after getting married. Union Minister SPS Baghel, a former police officer, humourously remarked that his boss used to say that grooms should be punished if they didn't take their wives to see the Taj Mahal or a beautiful destination, and instead chose to attend Parliament. Meanwhile, a female MP jokingly asked if Surya had brought his newly wedded wife to Delhi or left her behind in Bengaluru South.

In a post-budget press conference, Maharashtra Chief M Devendra Fadnavis, along with his two deputy CMs, Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, addressed the media. During the briefing, Shinde joked about how the trio was still together, just with different seating arrangements, now that Fadnavis holds the CM’s chair. Since Shinde had made a similar comment a few days earlier, Ajit Pawar nudged Fadnavis and whispered, “He still can’t get over it” (losing the chief ministership).

In Maharashtra’s Beed district, police personnel will now display nameplates without surnames in an effort to eliminate caste-based discrimination. Nearly 100 such nameplates have been distributed across police stations and offices in the central Maharashtra district. The move follows an earlier directive from Beed SP Navneet Kanwat in January, instructing officials to address each other by their first names only, to help curb caste bias. The nameplates are now in place across various offices, ensuring no mention of surnames.