Tough Taskmaster

President Pranab Mukherjee has always been known to be a workaholic, but Vice-Chancellors of central universities, for the first time, had first-hand experience of the hard taskmaster that he can be. V-Cs of 40 central universities attended a conference Tuesday at Rashtrapati Bhavan hosted by the President, who is the Visitor to these universities. Landing at the venue at 9.30 am, they had little option but to sit through the marathon session till 8.20 pm when President Mukherjee wrapped the event with his speech. Mukherjee sat through the entire proceeding and even signed files in between. He only took a short break around 3 pm for lunch. After the session ended, he gave the V-Cs a 15-minute break, asking them to join him for dinner. The V-Cs were given seven minutes to make their presentation, with the President warning them in jest that if they took more time, it would be at the cost of delaying their food for the evening.

CANDID TALK

SAM Pitroda, the head of the newly appointed expert committee on Prasar Bharati which began its official work on Tuesday, is interestingly not sure about what the fate of his panel's report would be given the fact that recommendations of previous committees appointed by the I&B Ministry have largely been ignored. Asked about this, Pitroda was candid. He said it was possible that his committee's report would also end up in the cold storage and pointed out his experience with the Railway Ministry in this regard. He said everyone knows what happened to the report of the panel headed by him on modernisation of the Indian Railways. The report, he said, was put on the back burner and bits and pieces were implemented.

SPECIAL SCREENING

REAL life cops will meet reel life counterparts this week in Mumbai when Akshay Kumar-starrer 'Special 26' will be screened for CBI officers. A heist drama, the film is based on a real life group of con artistes who robbed famous businessmen and politicians by pretending to be CBI or Income-Tax officers in the 1980s. The agency has also come out with several advertisements in the recent past advising the general public to be aware of the fake CBI. Senior officers who are likely to attend the screening would also provide their opinion on the way CBI's functioning is shown in the movie.

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