Tailpiece

Key Appointment

UT cadre IPS officer of 1993 batch Praveer Ranjan is back in the CBI and is slated to head its anti-corruption unit. Ranjan was pursuing masters in public management from a Singapore University. He will be replacing Rakesh Agarwal who completes his deputation with the CBI in April this year. Agarwal,a 1994 batch IPS officer of Himachal cadre,has handled sensitive cases like the Navy war room leak,the CWG scam and Bhopal gas tragedy. He will be repatriated to his parent cadre. Ranjan was earlier handling a special unit of CBI which is responsible for gathering intelligence.

External Health

THAT bureaucrats love foreign trips is well-known. The latest in the line is director general of health services Dr Jagdish Prasad who flew to Geneva Wednesday for the 130th session of the WHO executive board meeting. Health secretary P K Pradhan and additional secretary K Desairaju had left last week for the meeting which began on Monday. The office of the health minister has been discouraging unnecessarily large overseas delegations and Prasad got permission to fly only after giving detailed justifications about why he needed to be in Geneva.

Tamil Talk

FOREIGN Minister S M Krishna surprised everybody,including his senior officials,when he broke into fluent Tamil during his visit to Sri Lanka this week. The occasion was the distribution of 10,000 bicycles to Tamils in Jaffna. It drew loud cheers from the locals and even the Lankan officials were appreciative.