Pre-Truth — snappy, witty and significant snippets from the world of politics and government.
Why BJP calls transfers in Karnataka ‘Tughlaq’s Darbar’
Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy’s elder brother has a unique moniker given by the opposition — ‘super CM’. He earned this title as he is in the habit of taking unilateral decisions, especially when his younger brother is in power. Revanna has transferred 700 officers in just 24 hours, which may be the highest number of transfers by any government department in the country.
This move is being seen as his autocratic way of controlling the JDS-led coalition government. As of now, Revanna has transferred 10 superintending engineers, 20 executive engineers, 200 assistant executive engineers, 191 assistant engineers and 150 junior assistants among others.
The BJP has termed this move by Revanna as “Tughlaq’s Darbar” and will result in the collapse of the government. In June, Revanna had decided to transfer several officials from the power department, which is being held by senior minister D.K. Shivakumar. Shivakumar was extremely angry as he felt that Revanna was fiddling in his affairs and it led to tension between the two parties.
Russian President attends private dinner at Modi’s residence
Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not have gone to receive Russian President Vladimir Putin at the airport, as he usually does for important visiting heads of state/government, but he did underscore the importance of the relationship through another gesture. Modi threw a private dinner for Putin at his residence at 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, minus any aides from either side. This is a rare gesture from the Indian PM, which he has extended only to very select guests in the past, including Bhutanese King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Also read: The mysterious disappearance of Divya Spandana and her Twitter bio
Divya Spandana skips Congress’ key strategy meeting
Congress social media in-charge Divya Spandana has been the subject of speculation after rumours about her resignation surfaced earlier this week, following the mysterious disappearance of her Twitter bio. Claiming that was because of a bug, Spandana put her bio back and things seemed to be calm for a while.
All, however, is far from well. Spandana, who has not been going to her 15, Gurdwara Rakab Ganj office, could not be reached for a strategy meeting scheduled for Thursday. It was held by Jairam Ramesh, convener of the Congress’ core group committee for the 2019 polls. With the social media head incommunicado, Ramesh decided to go ahead with the meeting nevertheless, inviting a few members of the social media cell as representatives.
How ‘defamatory portions’ of book on Ramdev became public
Delhi High Court this week restrained Juggernaut Books from publishing Godman to Tycoon, a book based on Baba Ramdev’s life, until it deletes certain portions that were “defamatory”. However, Justice Anu Malhotra inadvertently reproduced the defamatory portions in her judgment making it available to the public. Juggernaut is moving the Supreme Court in an appeal but its lawyers, who cracked up reading the judgment, say they could just delete the contentious portions from the book and instead attach the HC verdict as an explanation!
Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi is making films on ‘unsung heroes’
Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s love for silver screen is well-known. So far it has been limited to watching movies, but he may soon become instrumental in the making of some of them. For several years, he has been writing scripts on 100 “unsung heroes” who participated in the country’s freedom movement. The focus of his research is to bring to light their contributions and how they didn’t get their dues in terms of recognition.
His plan is to unveil a series of short movies on them. While an announcement is awaited soon, it would be interesting to see how many of these unsung heroes were associated with the RSS, which has been striving hard to prove its contributions to India’s freedom movement.
Journalist couple’s Twitter tirade against Delhi Jal Board
Media personalities and couple Rajdeep Sardesai and Sagarika Ghose have virtually launched a war against Delhi Jal Board (DJB) on Twitter for water troubles in their Panchshila co-op society. Rajdeep first flagged it Wednesday, tweeting how there was no water in his society for a week now and residents were forced to try and get a tanker. He tagged the DJB and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, demanding action, but to no avail. Sagarika has since taken over, slamming DJB for not responding to complaints. She posted “more horror stories” from the DJB Friday. Harassed residents, she claimed, were being rudely told, “We only take complaints; we don’t act on them.”
Also read: In Bhopal, PM Modi invoked many top leaders except his favourite Ambedkar
In another tweet she said a “private party” is stealing water in Malviya Nagar and shutting down other lines. “What sort of nonsense is this? Why are citizens paying steep water charges? To have their water stolen? Why aren’t you registering complaints?” she said in another tweet, tagging the DJB. In trying to shake up the Delhi Jal Board with her angry tweets, Ghose obviously missed the fact that the DJB is barely active on Twitter. Its last post from its handle was on 23 July.
(Contributors: Ruhi Tewari, Apurva Vishwanath, Pragya Kaushika and Rohini Swamy)
Transferring officials is the only thing that these fools understands about governance Harshamoy mukherjee