Opinion Party time for officials

With the weather turning pleasant,many senior Delhi officials used the opportunity to throw garden parties on their sprawling lawns.

Coomi Kapoor

February 26, 2012 02:27 AM IST First published on: Feb 26, 2012 at 02:27 AM IST

Party time for officials

With the weather turning pleasant,many senior Delhi officials used the opportunity to throw garden parties on their sprawling lawns. The Capitals babus have honed their skills as hosts what with power guest lists,quality catering and fine frills. National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon threw two parties on successive Sundays with the whos who of the Capital present. IB chief Nehchal Sandhu hosted a swanky lunch,which included a crooner. Vice President Hamid Ansari invited fellow members of the IICs Saturday Club to his residence for a talk with former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. The sunshine,surfeit of kababs and biryani,put several elderly members to sleep and they dozed off during the talk. Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathais party,however,was a trifle stodgy in comparison to the glittering functions thrown by his high profile predecessor Nirupama Rao. The biggest let down was that the host was missing as he had left for the Maldives on work.

Blues for City of Joy

No one is quite sure why West Bengals mercurial chief minister,Mamata Banerjee,suddenly decided that all the buildings in Kolkata should be painted blue. It appears that Banerjee drew inspiration from Jaipur which is known as the pink city because of the liberal use of the locally quarried red stand stone by former rulers. Mamata could not have selected red as the appropriate colour for Kolkatas buildings since it is the colour of her arch rival,the CPI(M). Nor did she opt for her own partys colour,green. A TMC supporter claimed that blue was chosen because it is the colour of the sky and represents limitless aspirations. It also is soothing and tourism-friendly. To date,the order for turning Kolkata blue is oral,the municipality has not passed any law prescribing the colour scheme for buildings.

No time for family disputes

The secretary,banking,and the secretary,disinvestment,requested Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee that they be given space in the Finance Ministry headquarters in North Block during budget formation,since they are sometimes required for urgent consultations. The banking secretarys office is in Parliament Street and disinvestment secretarys office in the CGO complex. Mukherjee saw the rationale of the request and instructed the revenue secretary to allocate offices to the two secretaries in North Block. But the request has raised the hackles of the other three secretaries in North Block. The secretaries of revenue,expenditure and economic affairs felt that drawing up the budget was their exclusive prerogative and the other two secretaries did not need to come into the picture. Rooms were grudgingly allotted to the two secretaries on the ground floor near the reception and not on the first floor,which is the hub of the Finance Ministry. When the officers complained about inadequate accommodation,the revenue and expenditure secretaries were unsympathetic. Mukherjee flew into a rage over the backbiting by his officials. He angrily pointed out that he had per force to deal with Mamata Banerjees politics but he was not going to waste his time intervening in the petty squabbles of his own ministry.

And now,a Fourth Front

The Third Front has been practically forgotten,but now a Fourth Front has cropped up which is a threat to both the UPA and the NDA. Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik helped spawn a Fourth Front by uniting chief ministers over the perceived threat of encroachment of the states rights by the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre. Even former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu is keen to join the group. The problem with a viable Fourth Front is that there are several powerful contenders for leadership including Mamata Banerjee,J Jayalalithaa and Nitish Kumar.

Focusing on medium,not message

The PMs new communication advisor Pankaj Pachauri has a tough task trying to persuade a reticent and shy Manmohan Singh to interact with the media. Pachauri has obviously decided that even if he cannot persuade the PM to be more pro-active,at least the PMs messages should be delivered as speedily as possible. Pachauri is using Twitter,Facebook and SMS to communicate. He has even promised to start a portal where television channels can upload footage of the PMs meetings rather than wait for Doordarshan to put out clips. On Wednesday,Pachauri used the PMs Twitter account for the first time to release the PMs letter in response to the chief ministers protesting against NCTC (National Counter-Terrorism Centre). The letter simply assured the CMs that the PM would look into their concerns,whereas Mamata Banerjee emerged from the meeting with far more substantive news. She claimed that Manmohan Singh had assured her that the NCTC proposal would be put on hold.