Cold shoulder from Delhi, stoic silence in Karnataka
A fortnight after the Global Investors Meet (GIM) in Bengaluru, the no-show by Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge continues to create ripples in the Congress and its government in Karnataka. State leaders have offered differing explanations for the top brass’s decision to skip the event, fuelling speculation about the implications it is likely to have on the rivalry between Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D.K. Shivakumar.
The perceived snub from the high command has also raised questions about Delhi’s stance towards Karnataka.
Congress insiders claim that Kharge and Gandhi gave no reasons for skipping the event. Some, however, say that the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha might have been reluctant to share the stage with BJP leaders who were also invited. When asked about it at a press conference, Shivakumar maintained a stoic silence.
The ‘winner’ at Mantralaya
The last two months saw stiff competition between civil servants in charge of different departments at Mantralaya. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had told them all to submit 100-day plans for their departments, given guidelines for improving transparency and ease of living, and told them all that the best departments would be recognised.
MITRA, a policy think tank of the Maharashtra government, evaluated these plans and the performance of different departments, and picked a winner. The award went to Iqbal Chahal, additional chief secretary in charge of the state home department. Interestingly, Fadnavis is also the minister in charge of the home department.
Of biometrics and kahwa
After taking charge as the new chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar’s first reform has been internal. The entry to the Election Commission of India (ECI) building now has biometric attendance machines for the 600-odd contractual and regular staff.
His signature Kashmiri ‘kahwa’ (tea) has also made it to the corridors of the commission. But kahwa isn’t his only connection to Kashmir. Kumar, who is a 1988-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Kerala cadre, was an additional secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) from 2018 to 2021, and played a key role when Article 370 was abrogated in 2019 and Jammu & Kashmir was split into two Union Territories.
A shoe for a shoe
As new Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal took over last week, some leaders, sitting in the party office, were looking back on all the past presidents of the state Congress unit. The most important learning for any person holding the post, they said, comes from a former president with one of the shortest tenures of less than a year. That’s SMI Aseer, who served as the state party president for a few months in 1983. Aseer was known for wanting to live a good life and had a large collection of fancy shoes—23 pairs to be precise.
When a journalist asked him about it and wrote a story based on the leader’s shoe craze back in the 1980s, Aseer had publicly criticised it, saying his personal life was not the media’s business. The Pune Union of Journalists had passed a resolution boycotting any press conference called by the leader. Aseer was shortly ousted from the party president’s post, the leaders recalled.
(Edited by Sudha V)
Also read: Delhi chief secretary moves to ‘cleanse system’ of AAP & Nitish Kumar keeps a 24-year-old promise