THE government has clarified its employees are not entitled to travel on premium trains while availing their LTC. A few premium trains have been started on some selected routes, the fares for which are substantially higher than the other trains. Some tickets are also sold by a bidding process. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had been receiving several queries about whether these tickets can be admissible for claiming LTC. A DoPT circular has clarified that in cases where employees have already undertaken travel by such trains while on LTC, the reimbursement would be restricted to the normal fare according to the entitlement of the employee. REVENGE THEORY STUNG by NIA’s chargesheet in the Liaquat Shah case, the Delhi Police has been left wondering whether the NIA is trying to settle its scores with it through the case. The Delhi Police has refused to hand over some terrorist-related cases to the NIA in the past, and it claims to have handled those cases with a lot of professionalism and success. And so, it now believes that professional jealousy was behind the NIA’s investigations into the Shah case. The NIA has blamed the Delhi Police for framing Shah as a militant and implicating him in a false case. PADMA BALM THE government seems to have put behind the recent bitterness with the German embassy over the teaching of German in some schools in place of Sanskrit. One of the awardees of Padma Shri this year is German citizen Annette Schmiedchen, who is a Sanskrit scholar and an Indologist. Interestingly, she is the wife of Rainer Schmiedchen, Germany’s Consul General in Kolkata. German ambassador Michael Steiner is obviously thrilled and has been planning a felicitation ceremony for the Padma recipient. MINISTER’S PETS Union minister Babul Supriyo’s friends have finally moved in with him. The construction of an enclosure for his pets at his New Moti Nagar residence has been completed and he formally ‘inaugurated’ it Wednesday. Supriyo had been waiting for his favourite pets to be flown in from his Mumbai house to his new house in the capital. The singer-turned-politician has built a new cage, as big as a room, with a heater and colourful shades, in the corner of the backyard lawn, for his African Grey Parrot, Amazon Ecletus, Multiple Sun Conures and Dutch parrots. He has also brought his canine friends — a Bullmastiff (whom he wanted to name after himself but his daughter disagreed), a white Golden Retriever, an American Pug and a doublecoated German Shepherd.
