Other pecking order: Who sat where and with whom

In status and hierarchy-obsessed Delhi, the seating order at important functions can be a source of endless speculation, glee and wounded egos. You go to a swearingin not so much to see as to be seen. Event managers often spend hours, indeed days, fretting about whom to seat where. And Modi's oath-taking ceremony was a planner's nightmare from the point of view of protocol. 

    There were heads of state and governments, a powerpacked business contingent — including Mukesh and Anil Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, the Mittals and Ruias, Gautam Adani and Anand Mahindra — sports and film stars like M S Dhoni and Salman Khan and possibly the largest turnout of religious leaders at such an event, including Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. 
    President Pranab Mukherjee sat on a pedestal while Modi sat to his left with his ministers. Sonia Gandhi sat between Nepal PM Sushil Kumar Koirala and former president Pratibha Patil. All eyes were on Pak PM Nawaz Sharif 
    Mauritius PM Naveenchandra Ramgoolam sat beside former president A P J Abdul Kalam, who in turn was seated next to former PM Manmohan Singh's wife Gursharan Kaur. 
    All eyes were on Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif, flanked on one side by Manmohan Singh and on the other by Gursharan Kaur. Then there was Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai with India's Vice-President Hamid Ansari beside him. BJP patriarch L K Advani had Maldives president Abdullah Yameen and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse for company. Bhutan PM Tshering Tobgay had former PM H D Deve Gowda as his neighbour. 
    Veteran BJP leader Murali Manohar Joshi, who vacated the key seat of Varanasi for Modi, sat with his wife and spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar alongside. The man credited for the BJP's phenomenal showing in UP, Amit Shah, was there too in the front row, seated alongside Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray. A slew of religious leaders, including Sadhvi Ritambhara, were also in the front row. 
    Interestingly, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav was relegated fairly far back but Amit Shah grabbed him by the hand and escorted him to the front — the bitterness of the UP campaign apparently having been forgotten, at least for one day.

BEAMING BILLIONAIRES: Mukesh & Nita Ambani with Gautam Adani at the swearing-in. The heavy attendance of corporate titans seemed to signal that the NDA would be more business-friendly than the previous regime

Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif was flanked on one side by Manmohan Singh and on the other by Gursharan Kaur