Exercising Caution

The Law Ministry is quietly planning to seek a fixed two-year tenure for the Law Secretary. The hush-hush move comes even as a high-powered search committee comprising the Attorney General,Principal Secretary to Prime Minister,Cabinet Secretary and DoPT Secretary meets on Wednesday to finalise the name of the next Law Secretary since the incumbent,D R Meena,retires at the end of this month. Among those who are in contention are B A Agarwal,Member-Secretary of Law Commission of India,and Legislative Secretary V K Bhasin. However,while Agarwal retires on May 31,Bhasin is scheduled to retire in August-end. So far,only Cabinet Secretary,Foreign Secretary,Defence Secretary and Home Secretary have a fixed tenure of two years. Twice earlier,attempts to give a two-year fixed tenure to the Law Secretary did not find favour. It remains to be seen if the effort succeeds this time,considering the fact that doing so would most likely see similar demands from other ministries too.

Top Moves

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is set to lose his long-serving private secretary Jaideep Sarkar,who has always been counted as among the “closest” to him. Sarkar,an IFS officer,couldn’t have asked for a better exit — he is tipped to go as India’s next ambassador to Israel — his first ambassadorial assignment. Meanwhile,Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar is said to have managed to pull himself out of the Brussels posting which usually alternates between the IAS and the IFS. As a result,the word is that IFS will retain the post of the Indian ambassador to the European Union but it may,ironically,remain within the Khullar family — his brother Dinkar Khullar,Indian representative at the IAEA in Vienna,is now the frontrunner for the Brussels job. However,bureaucratic circles are not willing to accept that the IAS lobby will concede willingly. Among other important transfers is that of the President’s Social Secretary Vijay Thakur Singh,who is slated to move as Indian High Commissioner to Singapore as the President wraps up her term at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Reaching Out

While Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s newsmaking meeting with her counterparts from Gujarat and Orissa fueled speculation of a non-UPA coalition in the making,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did his own bit to reach out to Opposition CMs at the internal security conference on Monday. He invited three non-UPA chief ministers to have lunch with him at his table. Those who got a place on the high-table were Akhilesh Yadav,Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik. Two Congress chief ministers also got this privilege — Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan and Assam CM Tarun Gogoi.

Unique Distinction

The Tourism Ministry is all set to have another Secretary-level officer. Sanjay Kothari,a 1978-batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre who has been working with the ministry since 2006,has been empanelled as Secretary. But because there is no vacant Secretary-level position elsewhere to accommodate him,he is likely to be promoted as Special Secretary,in the pay and rank of a Secretary. This will leave the tiny ministry with a unique distinction of having two Secretary-level officers but just one joint secretary. The other joint secretary has finished his tenure in the ministry and is on his way back to the parent cadre.