Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Officials in the Food and Civil Supplies Ministry were searching frantically for the minister Mohammed Taslimuddin all of last week since they needed his approval to clear two unstarred questions listed in his name which were to come up in Parliament on Monday. The minister was untraceable and so was his PS. The disappearing act was because an arrest warrant had been issued against the minister in a Bihar court.
Although underground, Taslimuddin was obviously in the Capital since on Saturday he resurfaced and caught a plane from Delhi to Patna. Fellow passengers on the aircraft included former ministers Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad who joked with him that there would be a police escort waiting for him at the airport. When the plane touched Patna there was a police escort in readiness for Taslimuddin, but not to march him off him to prison but to accord him a ceremonial welcome. The minister was driven straight to Chief Minister Rabri Devi’s bungalow, where he was informed that the charges against him, for which the arrest warrant had been issued, had been dropped.
Private, not Permanent
Textile Minister Shankersinh Vaghela has instructed officials that in his absence they should consult his Private Secretary, Rajiv Gupta. The PS, incidentally, was a favourite of the last regime as well. The Gujarat cadre IAS officer, was a protege of Murli Manohar Joshi and had once delighted Chief Minister Narendra Modi by reciting a poem in his honour.
Although Gupta has been working in Vaghela’s office for the last three months, his appointment has yet to be cleared by the Central Government’s Personnel Department. The Gujarat Government permitted the officer to come to Delhi but could not forward the mandatory vigilance clearance since Gupta has a checkered history. (Two files concerning inquiries against Gupta have mysteriously disappeared).
While Gupta has the minister’s backing, he has rubbed Textile Secretary Deepak Chatterjee the wrong way. The PS recently issued an order changing the work allocation of the joint secretaries in the ministry after a joint secretary declined to increase the export quotas of certain textile firms on Gupta’s directive. Chatterjee objected strongly to the circular pointing out that it was the secretary’s responsibility to delegate work not the PS’s. Gupta’s note was hastily withdrawn.
Inviting Trouble
When Sonia Gandhi’s office reported that she had not received her invitation card for the Independence Day function at Red Fort day there was a major flutter in the security establishment. Less than 400 invitations are dispatched for the special podium for VVIPs below the Fort’s ramparts and each one gets a parking sticker which allows the vehicle to come within a 100 metres of the enclosure. Fearful that the invitation might have got into the wrong hands, the authorities withdrew all the VVIP invitations and issued fresh cards and parking stickers in a different colour.
An inquiry revealed that the reason the card got lost was because the Protocol Division in the Defence Ministry had delivered her invitation by rider not to 10 Janpath, Gandhi’s official address, but at 24 Akbar Road, the Congress party office. The Congress president receives hundreds of letters daily, so it is not surprising if some of her mail gets misplaced. Two heads in the protocol department have already rolled for not addressing the envelope correctly.
Title Deeds
The Ministry of External Affairs has done away with the post of Secretary Economic Affairs and instituted instead a new secretary’s post titled secretary Information Research and Diaspora. The new designation sounds far more impressive than the work load suggests. The Information and Research to be handled by the secretary in charge does not include the MEA’s press and external publicity division, it simply involves looking after the MEA’s rather modest library and research section. As for the Diaspora Affairs, there is a dispute which has still to be resolved between the Minister for NRI Affairs Jagdish Tytler and the External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh over turf.
The new secretary’s post was reportedly created with a senior MEA officer in mind. An inquiry established that the officer was guilty of major financial irregularities while he was posted to Mauritius. But despite the black mark on his record, he had several politicians rooting for him to be made a full secretary. Former Prime Minister Vajpayee stymied the move in the last government and now Manmohan Singh has taken a similar position. The upshot is that the MEA is stuck with a fanciful sounding secretary level post for which, understandably, there will be few takers.
Virtual reality tour
The reception office at Rashtrapati Bhavan has undergone a major face lift. The distinctive touch of President Abdul Kalam is apparent in making the entry point more visitor friendly. The small reception counter where details of each guest were laboriously taken down has been replaced by a large hall with computers for feeding in the data. Visitors are issued passes which carry their photographs and the exact time by which they must exit.
While waiting for clearance visitors can avail of a multi media presentation which offers a virtual reality tour of Rashtrapati Bhavan through the computer. Another computer has a continuing display 1330 Tamil verses along with their English translations by the President.
