In Mayas footsteps

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is following the example of her Uttar Pradesh counterpart Mayawati in appointing her favourite bureaucrat in the government.

In Mayas footsteps

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is following the example of her Uttar Pradesh counterpart Mayawati in appointing her favourite bureaucrat in the government. Just like Mayawati,who appointed Shashank Shekhar,a retired state-service bureaucrat as her Cabinet Secretary,Banerjee has picked her long-time confidant in Rail Bhavan,Gautam Sanyal,who retired from the Central Secretariat Service in October this year,as the Secretary to the Chief Ministers Office. Sources said this move has ruffled some feathers in Bengal,as the band of IAS officers there expressed their discomfort in acknowledging a retired,non-IAS officer on extension as the head of what is practically the nerve centre of governance in West Bengal.

Valley babus

This seems to be the golden period for IAS officers from Jammu & Kashmir cadre. The state has four of its officers empanelled in the rank of Secretary to the Government of India. These include J&K Chief Secretary Madhav Lal (1977 batch); Pervez Dewan,Secretary,Ministry for Overseas Indian Affairs; Anil Goswami (1978 batch),Additional Secretary (Foreigners); and Pankaj Jain (1978 batch),Additional Secretary,Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation. The flip side is that not many of them want to return to the state.

Amar Singhs new look

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SOMETIME back,video clips,apparently taken by a cellphone camera and supplied to news channels,showed a bearded Amar Singh lying on a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over his mouth. Sent to judicial custody in connection with the cash-for-votes scandal,he was later released on bail. On Wednesday,Amar Singh was seen at a dinner hosted by Vice-President Hamid Ansari where,among others,Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also present. The former Samajwadi Party MP continued to sport a thick beard and a Maulana cap.

A house for PCA

PROHIBITIVE house rent in Delhi is a dampener for not only the common man but even for international dispute resolution bodies like the Permanent Court of Arbitration. So much so that Deputy Secretary General Brooks W Daly was heard saying that he was not sure whether the landlords in Delhi would find the idea of having a permanent representative from PCA as tenant a good enough reason to negotiate on the rent. In comparison,he said,the small-but-select organisation headquartered at The Hague in the Peace Palace pays a nominal service fee as rent and in turn has been having a free run of the palatial building since 1899.

MoEF missing in action

UNION Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde was up for some embarrassment when he chaired the fourth meeting of the task force on hydro project development on Wednesday. While the meeting was held to consider issues related to environment and forest clearances,not much could get done because Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan could not attend it because of a prior engagement. But what rattled a few participating ministers was that there was no official from the Environment Ministry,which was also attended by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and senior representatives from Jammu and Kashmir,Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.