Back from the US where he attended the Global Energy Action Forum-2022, Science and Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Monday chaired the first-ever CSIR leadership meet. The meeting was attended by directors and heads of departments of council's all 37 labs in the country. Singh announced 'one week, one lab' campaign to showcase technological innovations and breakthroughs in each of the CSIR labs — such as drones, heli-borne technology, state-of-the-art sewage cleaning machines, etc. Council's DG Dr N Kalaiselvi thanked the minister for making the effort in attending the meet, since he would have jet lag at the time, to which the minister quipped: “The Modi government knows no jet lag”. Sticking point: More and more officials appear to be sending their grievances directly to the top offices, including to the ministers concerned and even the PM, bypassing the bureaucratic chain of reporting. Some of the complaints are also forwarded through MPs. Even service unions have apparently developed this tendency to bypass immediate authorities and write directly to the top offices. Now, the government has decided to crack down. It has sent out instructions, reminding officials that there is an established channel of submitting representations and any digression will attract penal provisions under the service rules. Even if a family member of an official does this, the same view will be taken, officials have been told. Flag Day donations: The Armed Forces Flag Day falls on December 7. On this day, donations are sought from the public which go towards helping war widows, disabled ex-servicemen and dependents of battle casualties and the like. The Department of Ex-servicemen Welfare had requested the government to appeal to all public servants to contribute to this cause. Accordingly, all central government officials have been requested to donate at least Rs 200 from their November salary so that the corpus is ready well before December 7.
