A day after moving away from the power trip across half of India as the power minister, new home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde on Wednesday tripped his predecessor P Chidambaram just before assuming the charge.

He delayed going to the North Block to 11.30 am to take up the new assignment. When asked he told reporters at his residence that he was waiting for Chidambaram to finish clearing of files in the home ministry.

Little did he realise the massive embarrassment caused to Chidambaram, who cannot touch any file in the ministry since he ceased to be the home minister the moment the president signed the communique on Tuesday evening, shifting him to the finance ministry.
There was a joke in the AICC headquarters over Shinde getting the new and bigger responsibility on the day he tripped on power: Pranab Mukherjee tripped the economy and became the president of India and now Shinde tripped the grids and became the home minister.

Shinde first called on Congress president Sonia Gandhi at 10 Janpath and then assumed the charge as the home minister, vowing to plug gaps in the relations between the states and the centre by working closely with the chief ministers in dealing with the internal security challenges.

A former chief minister of Maharashtra, he knows what problems states face. He told reporters: "One has to have good relations with states. The states may be ruled by different parties. But I want to send a message to all chief ministers that we are all Indians and together we will work wherever there is a difficulty."

Pointing out that Chidambaram has plugged the gaps with the states "to a certain extent," he said: "I have been hearing from political circles in Central Hall in parliament that there is still scope to plug gaps in relations between the states and the centre."

He could not resist from pointing out that he is the second Dalit to become India's home minister. Rajiv Gandhi had made Buta Singh the home minister in 80s and it is Sonia Gandhi who gave him the key job.

Pointing out that he was still to get a grip of the gigantic task awaiting him in the home ministry, Shinde offered his last byte as the outgoing power minister, stressing that "people should appreciate how fast our engineers restored power...We got electricity in a matter of hours."