Modi, Shah attend mundan ceremony of IAS officer’s daughter
Lutyens Delhi’s power circle was abuzz Tuesday after lawyer Prashant Bhushan tweeted about a high-profile mundan (hair shaving) ceremony of a civil servant’s daughter that was attended by the who’s who of the Capital’s power circuit. Those in attendance were President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and a number of chief ministers, among others.
“Apparently this blue-eyed Joint Secretary is the son in law of a senior SC judge & the Mundan ceremony of his daughter was at the residence of that Judge!” Bhushan had tweeted.
Apparently this blue eyed Joint Secretary is the son in law of a senior SC judge & the Mundan ceremony of his daughter was at the residence of that Judge! https://t.co/HGHpCxHmtN
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) February 4, 2020
The bureaucrat in question is Diwakar Nath Misra, a joint secretary in the commerce ministry, according to his colleagues. He is the son-in-law of Supreme Court Judge, Justice Arun Kumar Mishra. A 2000-batch Assam Meghalaya cadre IAS officer, Misra had worked in the petroleum ministry before his current assignment in the commerce department. He was the secretary, Oil Industry Development Board.
The commerce ministry also has another well-connected son-in-law. Shyamal Misra, a 1996-batch Haryana cadre IAS officer with degrees from IIT Kanpur and Harvard Kennedy School, is the son-in-law of Nripendra Misra, former principal secretary to PM Modi.
Nripendra Misra was recently appointed chairperson of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
Of awards, diaries and calendars
In an apparent attempt to check wasteful expenditure, the Narendra Modi government now wants details of awards given annually by each ministry as well as their expenditure on diaries and calendars.
In a communication to all ministries last week, the office of Jitendra Singh, Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office, attached two proforma seeking information regarding awards given annually by all ministries, departments and government organisations.
Singh’s office, which also sought information on how much money ministries spend on diaries and calendars procured in a year, had set 3 February as the deadline for the information. It’s a different matter that many of the ministries have chosen to ignore the communication despite instructions that it should be treated as “most urgent”.
Preamble missing from the Parliament Constitution Calendar
Parliament Secretariat has issued a new calendar for 2020 with the Constitution as its basic theme. Different sections and articles of the Constitution are displayed on all 12 month-wise pages of the calendar. They also carry the logo (emblem) of the Constitution. What has, however, got tongues wagging is the absence of the Preamble, which has been central to public discourse in the context of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, from the calendar.
(Contributors: Moushumi Das Gupta and Rahul Sampal)