Operation Duryodhana and IIT Kanpur

11 members of Indian parliament are caught on tape, taking bribes to table a question in the house. While I was going through the report filed at the Cobrapost two things caught my eyes. Some of the questions were hilarious and someone at Cobrapost is a fan of Catch 22. Sample this:

Whether the Railway Ministry has placed any order for purchase of the Yossarian Electro Diesel engine from Germany?

Whether the Government has given sanction for the seed trial of Salinger Cotton of Monsanto? If so, has a report been prepared on Catch 22 cotton so far?

There are other literary mentions too, but I leave it to you to dig it out.

Shivam Vij, our fellow blogger should be responsible for this one?

Is it true that while NRI firms such as India Uncut of USA, Sepia Mutiny of Britain and AnarCap Lib of Netherlands have been allowed to invest in Indian SSIs, the reputed German investment firm Desipundit has been denied permission? If so, the reasons thereof? Is the Union Government of India planning to make automatic the long procedure of permission for SSIs to import new technologies such as Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Blogrolls, Splogs and Hitcounters?

And it makes me very sad but someone in the story is from IIT Kanpur too. It is BJP M.P. Anna Saheb M.K. Patil from Maharashtra, who was caught on the camera, taking bribe. Quoting from the story:

Patil, the BJP MP from Maharashtra, was minister of state for rural development in the NDA government. In his words he is a technocrat. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur (“Ist ranked”), he claims to be a sworn critic of political corruption. While initially Patil was given a tsunami related question, he soon takes to NISMA and ends up pocketing a total of Rs 45,000 for submitting questions on its behalf. (emphasis mine)

Well, I love Scot Adam’s take on the IITs here and here (second link via Nanopolitan)

But there goes our IIT educated M.P.

Update: Now for the twist in the IITK story

And as for Anna Saheb M.K. Patil,the BJP MP, either IIT- Kanpur should sue him for wrongly declaring himself to be their alumnus or the Election Commission should go after him for declaring his educational qualifications in the Lok Sabha Member page as

‘M.Sc. (Chemical Engineering) and ANSI SugarTechnology Educated at Poona University, Pune (Maharashtra), Louisiana State University (U.S.A.) and N.S.I., Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh)’

and not mentioning a word about his IIT degree. Wonder why somebody would not put in their IIT degree in their Biographical sketch?

From http://swarangal.blogspot.com/2005/12/questions-and-answers.html

Ah, NSI is just next door to IIT Kanpur. That might have given our M.P. an idea?