With all due respects to the seat of the President of India, there’s no gainsaying that the present incumbent Pranab Mukherjee has been a wily politician whose guile none have been able to match, even his former boss, late Indira Gandhi. So is it a shot of Muherjee-vallian diplomacy that the Honourable President invited Uddhav Thackrey and family to the Rashtrapati Bhavan? That too, just around the time PM Modi had shunned Uddhav? Insiders say that Uddhav, wife Rashmi and son Aditya Thackrey were guests of the President and enjoyed the honour. Notably, in the recent past several other regional satraps have become special guests of the President. Experts say that this is part of Pranab-da’s PR exercise, especially to bolster his stance that his seeming soft corner for Modi is nothing but an aspect of his grand strategy.