Profiting from war
A weakened Congress high command may be struggling to run its writ in Karnataka, but party insiders attribute another reason for its incapacity—Delhi leaders’ “enriching” experience in the southern state.
Protracted “war” between Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy, D.K. Shivakumar, offers tremendous opportunities to make a killing on both sides. That’s also because they don’t have much to explore in two other Congress-ruled states.
Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, who has a direct line with senior party leader Rahul Gandhi, isn’t known to indulge fortune-seekers from Delhi. And Himachal Pradesh is too poor to indulge Delhi visitors.
That makes Karnataka the only happy hunting ground for Congress emissaries from Delhi. The longer the Siddaramaiah-DK war continues, the better for these Delhiwallas.
Big, fat Yadav wedding in Saifai
Saifai, Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh, turned into the venue for a grand family wedding this week as his late brother Rajpal Yadav’s son Aryan married Delhi-based lawyer Tsering Angchuk, who hails from Ladakh.
The three-day celebrations drew over 50,000 party workers and guests from across the political spectrum. Mulayam’s son Akhilesh and his wife Dimple hosted the event.
Several BJP leaders, including Union minister S.P. Singh Baghel and state minister Dinesh Pratap Singh, were also in attendance. The event was also attended by Akhilesh’s step-brother Prateek Yadav and his wife Aparna Yadav, who had switched to the BJP before the 2022 state elections. Several guests from Ladakh also graced the occasion.
Aryan’s elder brother, Abhishek Yadav (Anshul), currently serves as Etawah district panchayat president, a position previously held by their mother Premlata Yadav.
Before the griha pravesh (home entry) ceremony, newlyweds Aryan and Tsering visited Mulayam’s memorial to seek his blessings. Aryan, considered close to Akhilesh, earned a Master’s degree from University of Sydney in 2019, the same institution Akhilesh attended.
Wait gets longer for Andhra chief secy’s post
G. Sai Prasad’s wait to assume the coveted chief secretary chair in the Andhra Pradesh secretariat at Amaravati got a bit longer, as CM N. Chandrababu Naidu has extended the services of his junior, K. Vijayanand, due to retire Sunday, by three months.
Sai Prasad, an IAS officer of the 1991 batch, is among the six officers Naidu overlooked last December while picking 1992-batch Vijayanand as the chief secretary.
Orders issued Saturday by the general administration department state that following the Centre’s Department of Personnel & Training’s approval, the state government has granted service extension to Vijayanand, with effect from 1 December till 28 February next year.
Notably, the same orders state that Prasad, presently special chief secretary (water resources department) and ex-officio special chief secretary to the CM, is being appointed as the next chief secretary with effect from 1 March, 2026, upon Vijayanand’s retirement.
While one senior IAS, speaking with ThePrint, opined that the short duration extension might be for Vijayanand to complete any important unfinished businesses, a source close to Naidu said the extension was merely to allow Vijayanand, who has minister Nara Lokesh’s backing too, to be in the top bureaucrat post for a respectable year or so.
An expert in the energy sector, Vijayanand has held the post for 11 months now.
The decision to announce Sai Prasad’s name, among other things, the source said, is to placate the Kamma community, to which Prasad belongs, from “feeling left out of the top official machinery”. Prasad was Naidu’s secretary and principal secretary from 2014 to 2019.
Assuming charge on 1 March, Prasad will be chief secretary for just three months as he retires May-end. “But the IAS officer is expected to get as much extension as possible, if rules permit up to a year,” the source said.
Air pollution plays spoilsport
The inaugural event of The Nehru Centre, a new think tank, was deferred this week as Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi limited her outdoor engagements due to high air pollution levels in Delhi. The event had been scheduled for 26 November, observed as Constitution Day since 2015. Around the same time, Sonia was spotted spending time in Dubai with her daughter, Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Priyanka’s Robert Vadra also joined the family in Dubai. Senior West Bengal-based journalist Gautam Bhattacharya happened to run into them near Burj Khalifa and later recounted seeing the Gandhis going about their day without any security detail.
Meanwhile, the launch of the think tank is now expected to be held in the first week of December, during the winter session of Parliament.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)