Dis-empowering Women

Poornima recently got rid of both senior officials in the commission, the Deputy Secretary R R Bhama and the Secretary Rewa Nayyar. Her complaint was that the NCW’s financial powers are vested in all seven members of the commission and not the chairperson alone. Also, the commission’s secretary, a bureaucrat, had sole financial powers for administrative expenditure. Poornima wanted the rules altered in her favour. In the process, she effectively whittled down the powers of the commission, a statutory body formed by an act of Parliament. Under the new rules framed at her behest, while the chairman is vested with all financial powers instead of the entire commission, all allocations from the Rs five-crore annual budget have to be cleared first by the ministry.

Not Yet De-commissioned

WITH just a few days to go before he finally steps down as cabinet secretary, T R Prasad has been busy making arrangements for life after retirement. He has identified a government bungalow on Pandara Road to which he plans to shift, since the bungalow on Prithviraj Road earmarked for him has to be vacated after October 31.

Prasad, who has a security threat from the PWG, also recently acquired a pistol from Customs House. All that remains is for Prasad to get a post retirement sinecure. It was thought that the highly regarded bureaucrat might be appointed a governor or chairman of a regulatory body. Instead, he was shortlisted to head an important economic commission.

Senseless Security

A meaningless exercise followed by the Special Protection Group is to seal and send to the laboratory for testing samples of all food which is to be eaten by its VVIP protectees. The lab results are available long after the food has been digested!

Equally pointless is the practice of lifting samples of fuel meant for VVIP flights, since the fuel analysis is received much after the aircraft has taken off and landed.

There is similarly no rationale for policemen to be stationed at every few feet on the VVIP’s route, particularly as none of the cops have modern firearms to tackle a terrorist in case of an attack. The practice of posting policemen all along a route for hours together, serves more as a guard of honour than any practical purpose.

In Dehra Dun earlier this month a sizeable portion of the passengers booked on the Shatabdi Express to Delhi missed the train because the authorities had blocked off the city’s main trunk roads of Rajpur road and Dalanwala, because President Abdul Kalam happened to be visiting the city.

Sibling Rivalry

IAS officers instinctively attempt to keep an IPS officer a notch lower in the administrative hierarchy than members of their own biradiri. When Gurbachan Jagat, the retired Director General, BSF, was appointed as a member of the Union Public Service Commission, the Estates Department allotted him a modest flat in a multi-storey building meant for a joint secretary and refused to allow him to retain his earlier bungalow, even though UPSC members have in fact a status higher than full secretaries to the GoI. Similarly H J Dora, former Director General, CISF, who was appointed as a vigilance commissioner was sanctioned only a Pandara Road flat. It is particularly galling for the IAS that Dora, because of a security threat, has a long retinue of security guards and cars in his convoy, which totally overshadows his IAS boss Chief Vigilance Commissioner P Shankar’s lone vehicle.

Goel’s Write Angle

Despite his busy schedule as minister of state in charge of the all important, PMO, Vijay Goel has managed to find time to write a book as well. The glossy coffee table book published by Roli Books, which is to be released shortly, is on the old havelis of the walled city of Delhi.

Goel says that he did not have to spend much time researching, since he has lived in Old Delhi all his life and is well acquainted with the antiquity and unique architectural features of the old residences, 76 shops and places of worship, most of which do not figure in the standard tourist guides.

Goel even instructed the cameramen associated with the project from which angle the photographs should be taken. For him it has been a case of combining business with pleasure since in any case he has to keep making trips to Old Delhi, the constituency from where he has been elected twice.