The Sixty plus key strategists of Gujarat CM

Undetached,but a group of voices that count has Modi ties.

Their timing coincided with the beginning of the race for 2014,they call themselves the Citizens for Accountable Governance (shortened to a useful CAG),and they comprise a group of young professionals,technocrats and whiz kids who have quit high-profile jobs in big multinational firms for this initiative.

If CAG didnt exist,the opposition could have dreamed it up. But,has it? While CAG says it is not organisationally linked to any political party,it doesnt deny association with a key Narendra Modi strategist,Prashant Kishor. Besides,it has only had two events so far,in Gandhinagar in June,comprising mostly young Muslim leaders,and Delhi earlier this month,both of which were attended by the Gujarat Chief Minister. Modi sat through eight hours for the Delhi event.

At the core of the not-for-profit organisation registered under Section 25 of the Companies Act are graduates from IIM,IIT,Indian School of Business,Stanford,Cornell etc,who were earlier working in firms such as A T Kearney,J P Morgan,Michelin India,IBM,Barclays Capital,Merrill Lynch,Deutsche Bank,McKinsey and Company and Goldman Sachs.

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The 60 full-time paid members get subsistence allowance but,as Shreyans Mehta points out,this is nowhere near the remuneration of their previous jobs.

Kishor,one of the behind-the-scenes Modi strategists and a former UN mission chief in Africa,guided them to form the NGO and is still a mentor,CAG admits. The idea behind the group was to further the cause of accountable governance in India. What initially began as a coffee-table discussion gradually became an online outreach to people of similar interests in our immediate networks,and has now finally started taking shape in the form of a larger network of people in the shape of CAG. In the immediate future,we aim to involve 1,00,000 on-ground associates to help us achieve our goals, CAG says on its website.

It does have influential backers in the exercise. The sponsors at the Delhi event included the likes of Lodha Group,HDFC,Reliance Mutual Fund and Crossword.

Rajesh and Ramvir jumped from the fourth-floor window of their hotel room to escape the flames. While Ramvir survived the fall, Rajesh died during treatment.

Ghaziabad woman killed after protesters set fire to Hyatt in Kathmandu

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Indian couple Rajesh and Ramvir Gola were staying at the Hyatt Regency in Kathmandu when anti-government protests turned violent. They jumped from their fourth-floor window to escape the flames, but Rajesh died during treatment. Ramvir returned home with her body, claiming that no one, including the Embassy, helped them.

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