Delhi Confidential

A few days before he resigned as Union Minister,C P Joshi,who was holding additional charge of the Railways,reconstituted the Passenger Services Committee in the Railway Board. All three members of the committee are from Rajasthan. Headed by Jagdish Chander from Sriganganagar,it has Virendra Vaishnava from Udaipur and Kanhaiya Lal Dhakar from Bhilwara. The committee members,with a two-year tenure and many perks and allowances,recommend improvement in passenger services to the Railways Minister. The Railways has also reconstituted its Heritage Committee,which is now headed by Congress MP Mabel Rebello and includes danseuse Mallika Sarabhai and Rani Balbir Kaur. During Mamata Banerjee’s tenure,all these committees were headed by either TMC MPs or pro-TMC members of the intelligentsia.

UNDER SCANNER

Functioning of the National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW) under the Women and Child Development Ministry is under the scanner. Secretary Nita Chaudhury is said to be upset about the lack of output of its battery of well-paid consultants — around 50 at last count,each paid Rs 50,000 to 75,000 per month. At a recent meeting,the functioning of the NMEW faced severe criticism and even a Rs 5 crore media plan that it had drawn up was scrapped. A senior official who was in-charge of the NMEW has also been moved back to the ministry.

POOR RESPONSE

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had issued a circular on May 1 last year for putting in place regulatory parameters for exercise of discretionary powers of ministries and putting them in public domain so as to minimise arbitrariness. They were given three months to prepare the guidelines in this regard if they didn’t have them. Out of 88 departments,only 18 responded. The DoPT reminded them about its circular about three months ago,but to no avail. On Thursday,the DoPT issued another circular,asking the ministries to act urgently.