Opinion Disclose before you travel

Bureaucrats for ‘Bread Winners’

A women’s organisation in Ukhrul district of Manipur has become the beneficiary of the benevolence of IAS officers of the 2006 batch,thanks to the initiative of the district’s deputy commissioner R Sudhan. Impressed with the work of this organisation,Women Bread Winners’ Union,in the field of food security,Sudhan has convinced 89 of his batchmates to contribute Rs 500 each from their salaries. The young officer told his batchmates that the kind of work this group was engaged in was exactly “what the nation wants”.

Chief Minsters’ cancelled trips

In the last one year,three foreign trips involving two Chief Ministers were turned down by the Ministry of External Affairs on reasons of protocol. Two of these proposed trips were by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and one by Jharkhand CM Arjun Munda. Gogoi was to travel to New York in April this year on an invitation from a researcher working in the Royal Bhutanese Embassy in the United States. The MEA denied permission for the trip on the grounds that the invitation had come neither from the US government nor from the Bhutanese government but from a researcher. Besides,it was felt that it was improper for a state government to correspond directly with a diplomatic mission of a foreign government abroad. The other trip Gogoi had planned was to Israel to attend a Water and Environment Technology conference in November last year. This too was shot down with the MEA saying it was a technical conference and attendees from other countries were all officers or technical experts. Munda was to travel to Bangkok last June along with several senior state government officials to attend an ‘Indian Engineering Exhibition’. However,the MEA thought it was “not appropriate” for the CM to attend this event.

Naveen Jindal’s surprising stand

Congress members in the Privileges Committee of Parliament were taken aback with the stand of their colleague Naveen Jindal on a privilege motion against former BJP president Rajnath Singh sometime back. Congress MP Meenakshi Natarajan had hauled Singh to the committee over his allegation that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had forcefully taken over agricultural land in Haryana. The committee was of the opinion that there was no basis for making such an allegation. Committee chairman P C Chacko suggested that Singh should be let off after a written apology. When BJP members opposed the suggestion,Jindal surprisingly sided with them,making many Congress MPs wonder as to what was on his mind.

A house for the CBI director

2 Janpath,the brand new government bungalow that was being readied for Union Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh,has not been reallotted after his death. The bungalow is now being earmarked for the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation since he wanted a residence which also has a mini office complex attached to it. Earlier,another bungalow which met these specifications—10 Akbar Road—had been identified for the CBI but after 2 Janpath fell vacant,a switch has been made. CBI directors over the past decade have been occupying 22 Tugluk Crescent with one room on its periphery being used as a makeshift office for the director.

— IE Bureau