Deoras rise

Change of mind

Before finally giving the nod to the appointment of Ajit Kumar Seth as the new Cabinet Secretary,the government had all but made up its mind to give another extension to incumbent K M Chandrasekhar for three months. The reasoning was that it would be better to let Chandrasekhar continue till the dust settled on some raging controversies like the 2G spectrum allocation case and the CWG scam. The clincher in terms of making a fresh appointment came after it was realised that the list of probables from whom the government had to make a selection was not going to change in the next three months. Seths appointment was therefore announced. In the meanwhile,Chandrasekhar,who will demit office in the second week of June,has been diligently avoiding dropping any hint over his next assignment. His stock reply to such queries is that he hasnt been told anything.

Missing members

The 18-member Congress media team,set up last December to present the partys viewpoint more forcefully and coherently,has remained a non-starter. Comprising many senior leaders,including Ambika Soni,Ghulam Nabi Azad and Pawan Kumar Bansal,the panel had preliminary discussions over tea and snacks a day after it was constituted. A few weeks later,the panel met again but that meeting was attended by less than half a dozen members. It has not had another meeting after that. Nobody seems to remember the reason this panel was set up while Congress ministers and senior leaders continue to contradict one another in public. Incidentally,Soni,Azad and Bansal have all been entrusted to do the same job for the government,as part of the new Group of Ministers on Media that has recently been set up.

Manis raj

Being only a nominated member of Rajya Sabha,Mani Shankar Aiyar realises he stands little chance of being inducted as a minister in the forthcoming Cabinet reshuffle. Desperate to stay relevant,he has fallen back on his pet theme,as he recently approached Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a proposal that would at least make him the chairman of a committee. Aiyar is learnt to have told the PM that it was time to undertake a comprehensive review of the Panchayati Raj systems,the last such exercise having been undertaken more than three decades ago. He proposed a committee under himself to carry out this review.

Job rackets

The staff crunch at the grassroots level to implement government programmes such as the NREGS is opening the doors to employment rackets. A director level officer in the Rural Development Ministry recently started getting a number of calls from Andhra Pradesh inquiring about the status of their job offers. On inquiry,a fake job racket was revealed. Apparently a number of locals had been given job offers to work on four-year contract on the implementation of NREGS. The offers were given on a document stamped with the NREGS logo and a forged signature of the director. It even mentioned the salaries these people were supposed to get Rs 11,578 per month and Rs 200 daily allowance. The touts had allegedly been demanding Rs 20,000 from each of these candidates to ensure that they got a posting of their choice. It was at this point that many started calling the director in Delhi with complaints and grievances.