Clearance campaign

It is not everyday that the Chief Minister of a state lands in Delhi with half of his Cabinet in tow.

Clearance campaign

It is not everyday that the Chief Minister of a state lands in Delhi with half of his Cabinet in tow. Kerala CM Oommen Chandy,who recently completed 100 days in office,in on a two-day visit to Delhi during which he has planned to meet more than a dozen Union Cabinet ministers. Chandy is learnt to have come with a fresh package of demands for his state,and would also push for expediting of sanctions and clearances for projects in the state. He is learnt to have sought appointments from at least 14 union ministers and has been paying courtesy calls on some others.

ALL ABROAD

Cities in the US are teeming with Indian Cabinet ministers right now. With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leading the way,a number of ministers are currently in the US on official visits. Amongst them are Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee,External Affairs minister S M Krishna,Commerce minister Anand Sharma,Renewable Energy minister Farooq Abdullah,Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad,Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has just come back from New York. With a fairly lean Indian mission in New York,the diplomats are quite a harried lot and have been joking that the PM can hold a Cabinet meeting in the US. Incidentally,some other ministers also happen to be out of the country at the same time. Kapil Sibal has gone to Finland,Pawan Kumar Bansal is in Africa and Ajay Maken is in China. Corporate Affairs Minister M Veerappa Moily has just returned from Mexico.

DIVIDE AND RULE

AS A newly created GoM starts deliberations to bridge the differences on a national manufacturing policy,it will have to contend with objections raised not just by Environment and Labour ministries but also some others. Defence Minister A K Antony is learnt to have expressed some doubts at last weeks Cabinet meeting. So did Kumari Selja,Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation,who had sent a written communication seeking some clarifications. On the other side of the divide were Social Justice Minister Mukul Wasnik and Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde,both of whom supported the policy.

THE X FILES

THE popular stories about files piling up on the table of Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan is now passe. According to the latest buzz,Chavan currently has only three files on his table. The first,Please Discuss written in bold letters on the cover,contains an index of a few thousand files kept neatly arranged in cupboards. The second,stamped Call Meeting,has the list of another set of files similarly stored. The third,Form Committee,has the numbers of the files dealing with the last category. At least they are a novel way of ensuring they are not filed and forgotten.

RTI RETURNS

THE note of the Finance Ministry to the PMO that Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy submitted in the apex court on Wednesday was accessed through a RTI application,something that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee admitted to in the US on Thursday. The applicant who got the note is RTI activist-cum-lawyer-cum-publisher Vivek Garg. Recently,Garg,who had been involved in training BJP leaders and workers in how to use the RTI Act,was appointed Convener of the national RTI Cell of the main opposition party.