Kolkata confidential

In ‘troubled’ waters
How many of us know about Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s swimming prowess. Security personnel on duty at the Mython Public Health Engineering (PHE) department Bunglaw were taken aback by the 64-year-old’s love for the waters. For about an hour every day,the chief minister swam across the pool and showed little signs of any weariness. People close to him attribute his swimming skills to his boyhood days spent in north Kolkata where he learnt the moves in one of the many ponds dotting the city during the ‘50s and ‘60s.

From baton to statute
After the recent controversy surrounding the implementation of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for the remand of PCAPA leader Chhatradhar Mahato,senior officials of the Kolkata Police are now making efforts to understand the law better. The Kolkata police are procuring copies of the Act and distributing them among senior officials. A vendor on the Old Court Street said that the police department has placed an order of 100 copies of the book with him. “After the state government faced a hard time in framing charges against Mahato under UAPA due to their ignorance about the Act,we have decided to make all our IPS officers aware of the Act,” said a senior police officer,requesting anonymity.

No-smoking zone
A Ramadoss,minister for health in the previous UPA government,has written to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee several times requesting him to quit smoking. The bronchial ailment that the chief minister recently suffered from has made him see reason in Ramadoss’s advice. The CM has cut down the number of cigarettes smoked per day to almost one third. What used to be 20 to 25 cigarettes a day now has been sized down to about 7 per day. “There is every possibility that he will kick the habit soon,” said a senior official.

Fighting for space
With students shooting several RTI applications to the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education and the HS Council for permission to see answer scripts,the two departments are now engaged in a mad quest for additional space. “We have more than 10 lakh students appearing for the Madhyamik and HS examinations every year. We have to have adequate space to store the answer scripts for at least five years,” said an official of the state HS Council,who recently met with the state urban development minister Ashok Bhattacharya in a bid for more space to store the answer sheets.