PM to host farewell dinner for outgoing NSA

In an unusual gesture, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will be hosting a farewell dinner for outgoing National Security Adviser M K Narayanan on Saturday.

Union Ministers and senior officials, who got an invitation for the dinner, were surprised as the prime minister usually does not exhibit such hospitality to a bureaucrat.

Apart from this, the prime minister's Principal Secretary T K A Nair is hosting a lunch for Narayanan earlier in the day.

Narayanan, who was earlier the chief of the Intelligence Bureau, will be sworn in as the West Bengal governor in Kolkata on Monday, on time to hoist the Tricolour on the Republic Day and take the salute of the ceremonial parade.

The new National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon will not have to handle internal security and anti-terror measures, as these sectors will be handled by the new mechanism proposed by Home Minister P Chidambaram under the home ministry.

Earlier, it was said that Narayanan's successor might not get the designation of the NSA, but of a foreign affairs advisor.