Former deputy prime minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani’s autobiography, My Country, My Life, was released here on Wednesday night by former president A P J Abdul Kalam. The booklaunch function turned out to be a loud power statement, and lived up to all the hype that had preceded it.

Among those in attendance, besides top leaders from NDA and the Sangh Parivar, were Union ministers Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala. The corporate sector too was there in full strength, with Mr Anil Ambani, Mr Sunil Mittal and Mr C K Birla leading the pack. And as if to show that the event, and the man behind the show, had his full backing, RSS general secretary Mohanrao Bhagwat too graced the occasion.

The only person who was missing from the scene, and whose absence was sorely felt, was former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with whom Mr Advani shared a very special bonding — a relationship that goes back several decades. While thanking Professor Kalam for agreeing to release the book, Mr Advani reminisced about his ties with Mr Vajpayee. “I spoke to him this morning, and he conveyed his best wishes,” the BJP leader told the audience.

The BJP’s shadow prime minister delivered a short speech, and it was left to his party colleague Jaswant Singh to liven the evening by throwing light on some controversial chapters in Mr Advani’s life. Mr Singh, in his speech, referred to the Ayodhya agitation, considered the defining epoch in the BJP’s calendar, and how he differed with his senior colleague on the manner and direction in which it was steered. “

But, to his credit, he never held it against me,” the former external affairs minister said. He then went to add that if Mr Advani had any regrets about it all, it was that he could not control his party-members on the day the Babri Masjid was demolished. The 986-page book has a foreword by Mr Vajpayee, and deals with almost all the important events that shaped Mr Advani’s career and thinking.

Now, Sonia talks of the bigger loan waiver

Signaling the UPA government’s move to enhance the scope of the massive loan waiver announced in the Union Budget, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that the land ceiling cap for beneficiaries of the loan write-off package ought to be increased to allow more farmers to benefit from the measure.

Ms Gandhi, who was echoing her son Rahul Gandhi’s suggestions, said regions such as Vidarbha and Marathwada had larger land holdings along with poor rainfall and noted that “benefits” of the waiver which is capped at 2 hactares for small farmers now ought to be “extended” to those in this farm distress zone.

“This issue (of extending the benefits) was raised in Parliament by some MPs, including Rahul Gandhi, and I hope that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister P Chidambaram will take the appropriate steps,” Ms Gandhi said. Mr Rahul Gandhi, talking on the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha, had said that the land ceiling of 2 hactares did not “account for land productivity” and “excluded deserving farmers in poorly-irrigated areas”.

Deora, Vasan, Shanta Kumar elected to RS

Union ministers Murli Deora, Prithviraj Chavan, G K Vasan, Congress treasurer Motilal Vora, mahila Congress chief Prabha Thakur, former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Mukut Mithi (all Congress), senior BJP leader and former Union minister Shanta Kumar, party spokesman Prakash Javadekar, Gujarat unit chief Purushottam Rupala, his Rajasthan counterpart Om Prakash Mathur (all BJP) and former Union minister Birendra Kumar Baishya (AGP) were on Wednesday declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha.

With the last date of withdrawal of nominations for the 56 Rajya Sabha seats from 17 states coming to an end on Wednesday afternoon, the fate of quite a few candidates were decided.

On the other hand, a contest was in the offing in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, West Bengal and Bihar, where the presence of candidates disproportionate to the number of seats up for grabs from each state had made polling inevitable. Elections for the remaining seats will be held on March 26.