ARMS dealer Abhishek Verma seems to have become an addict of the social micro-blogging site Twitter. Verma has been in jail for over a year on charges ranging from corruption to violation of Official Secrets Act,but his personal Twitter account is quite active,giving updates every few days on him or his cases. The tweets are invariably marked as being from Gaurav Chandok,his lawyer. The obsession with Twitter seems to have started this January and the latest post on Monday underlines that the CBI took a year to chargesheet him in a case involving an arms company. Compromise Formula KRISHNA Tirath and her bureaucrats at the Women and Child Development Ministry have been engaged in a tussle over the office of the Rashtriya Mahila Kosh,a microfinance body for women self-help groups,that works under the ministry. Krishna Tirath is keen that the office be shifted to her constituency in west Delhi. However,officials are unwilling to let go of the spacious premises in Connaught Place,for which the ministry pays a paltry rent of Rs 3 lakh a month,to move to a relatively remote place. A compromise has now been reached. Tirath has convinced her officials to open a branch office in her constituency. Complaint Centre A GROUP of Congress legislators from Assam recently called on party president Sonia Gandhi to complain about the 12-year-old Tarun Gogoi government in their state. They told Sonia that ministers had become complacent,and development works had come to a standstill in areas other than ministers constituencies. Interestingly,states Health and Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma,a known anti-Gogoi power-centre who accompanied the MLAs to Delhi,did not go for the meeting,preferring to manage the group from his room in Assam Bhawan. The meeting almost coincided with the second anniversary of Gogois third term in office,and came at a time when Gogoi was away in Thailand,trying to understand how Bangkok tackles water-logging and floods. IN HOT SEAT RETIRED IAS officer S Sundareshan has bagged the coveted job of mission director of the Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme,a recently launched programme whose success is being considered to be the key to UPA governments fortunes in next years elections. Sundareshan,a 1976-batch IAS officer who retired as Heavy Industries Secretary,will lessen the burden of Sindhushree Khullar,the Planning Commission Secretary who was holding the charge of mission director as an additional responsibility till now.
