Marathwada Diary

U V Bansod, who issued the notification dated September 20, 1997, performed this amazing feat while releasing a marathon list of 638 persons appointed as special executive officers (SEOs) in the district late last year.

However, the anxious SEOs were kept waiting 10 long months before the notification finally arrived, wondering whether the new nomenclature had caught the postman in a twist.

Turned out, the Postal Department was not wanting in geography but the Election Code of Conduct had barred its despatch till the Parliamentary elections were over.

But Bansod’s enthusiasm did not escape the anti-renaming lobby’s attention, with corporators Mohsin Khan and Mustaq Ahmed threatening to haul the bureaucrat to court forcontempt. Khan and Ahmed have filed a petition challenging the saffron combine’s move to rechristen the district and the plea is still pending in the Apex Court.

As babus, politicians and vigilante groups fight over the spoils of war, the tomb of Emperor Aurangzeb, after whom the city has been named, lies undisturbed under the serene sky at Khultabad. But the veteran of countless battles would have chuckled if he could only take a peek at the guest register of the Hotel Rama International in this eponymous city.

Every time Aurangzeb’s die-hard critic Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray descends on Aurangabad, he ironically insists on being ensconced in the cosy confines of the luxurious Aurangzeb suite’.

Is there a glimmer of a comforting turnaround? Are worldly luxuries and political stands mutually exclusive? Or does the discrepancy reek of plain doublespeak? What say you, Mr Thackeray?

Top billing

The Parbhani Municipal Corporation (PMC) obviously needs no watchdog, for half its members simplyare the Fourth Estate. About 27 of the 49 corporation’s members are either editors who run their own newspapers or reporters on the payrolls of weekly newspapers. The editors account for at least 14 weeklies published from Parbhani, most of them in Urdu.

In a strange coincidence not many of these 27 newspersons’ were connected to the media before they were elected to the corporation. No sirrr… neither S M Alipasha, the corporation’s former president, nor Parwesh Hasmi nor Alam Asfaq.

They suddenly realised the potential of weeklies and rushed headlong to launch their own. Each editor takes home a billing of several lakh rupees per year against advertisements inserted in their publications by the PMC. A cozy nexus, huh?

Great leveller

Education has for once failed to help people rise above their petty differences with the controversial common entrance test for admission to the medical and dental courses thereby driving a wedge between academicians, students and parents across Marathwada’sseven districts.

Politicians, curiously, have stayed away from the issue just as they have done on numerous other occasions. Perhaps they simply don’t have the patience to do some hard homework, a pre-requisite to understanding the medical controversies which plague Marathwada year after year.

The mantle has therefore fallen on two veterans of the freedom struggle, Padmavibhushan Govindbhai Shroff and Vijendra Kabra, to take up cudgels and fight for the cause of Marathwada.

Both have been filing public interest petitions on the issue, which boils down to a simple equation: a demand to fulfill the backlog of seats in Marathwada in medical courses and the allotment of special quotas for Marathwada’s students in colleges under the jurisdiction of the University of Mumbai.

Which is why the patriots took everyone by surprise when they recently announced their decision not to oppose the entrance examination if it conformed to a particular format.

Even as they spoke, parents’ committees sprang up all overthe region to oppose the entrance test. Former member of the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University, Vasant Kale, who first began the anti re-examination agitation and principal of the famous Rajarshee Shahu College at Latur, Anirudh Jadhav, are also trying to build up opposition to the examination.

The reason why some have not opposed the test, which seeks to equate students from all over the Maharashtra, could be a bloodthirsty desire for vendetta. With students from Latur district having mastered the art of writing the Higher Secondary Certificate examination and dominating 80 per cent of the merit list every year, Aurangabad’s students perhaps think the great leveller will call their rivals’ bluff after all.

— K S Manoj Kumar