Modi to attend the reception of J.P. Nadda’s son
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been attending marriage functions — and even a ‘mundan’ ceremony — at least once a week on an average for the last six weeks. The hosts included Supreme Court justice Arun Mishra’s son-in-law who is a bureaucrat, SC judge Uday U Lalit, bureaucrats and politicians. The next one in the schedule is the reception to be hosted by BJP president JP Nadda, whose son, Girish, got married in Pushkar last week. The bridegroom, Prachi, hails from Hanumangarh in Rajasthan. The reception is scheduled in Delhi on Friday.
Nadda had invited all top leaders and ministers to his son’s marriage but most of them had to skip as it coincided with US president Donald Trump’s visit to India. Nadda organised a reception in his native village, Vijaipur in Himachal Pradesh, last Saturday, which was attended by state Governor Bandaru Dattatreya, Chief Minister Jairam Thakur, and many other high-profile dignitaries.
In the past six weeks, the Prime Minister has attended the wedding receptions of BJP leader Prabhat Jha’s son, late Arun Jaitley’s son, Niti Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar’s son and Justice Uday U Lalit’s son.
In the first week of February, corridors of power were abuzz with talks about a high profile ‘mundan’ ceremony of the daughter of a joint secretary in the commerce ministry. It was attended by President Ram Nath Kovind, Modi, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and several chief ministers. The bureaucrat in question was Diwakar Nath Misra, son-in-law of Supreme Court Judge Arun Mishra. Justice Mishra was in the news recently after he praised the Prime Minister, calling him an “internationally acclaimed visionary ‘ and a versatile genius “who thinks globally and acts locally.”
Lateral entrants struggle to get admission in Sanskriti for their children
It has been almost six months since eight joint secretaries were appointed to the government through the lateral entry scheme. While the domain experts have all settled in, and are known to be extremely busy with work, they have encountered an unanticipated problem: None of their children have gotten admission in the city’s most popular school for civil servants — Sanskriti School. While most of the lateral entrants who came to Delhi from other cities wanted to get their children admitted in Sanskriti, the school kept delaying the process indefinitely. The lateral entrants got little help from the government in this regard, even though the school has a 60 per cent quota for children of Group A officers.
New record for presenting the budget
Last week Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal became the holder of a new record. He has become the only finance minister of Punjab to have presented the budget eight times. The record he broke was held by Sir Manohar Lal who remained finance minister of British Punjab state from 1937 in the Unionist government of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan. He lost his seat at the 1946 elections. Badal presented four budgets as finance minister in the Akali government from 2007 to 2011 and now in the Congress government since 2017.
(Contributors: Shanker Arnimesh, Sanya Dhingra and Chitleen Sethi)