Twitter trail

While the Prime Ministers Twitter page has understandably attracted thousands of followers since its debut in January,the person handling the account is careful about who the PMO is seen to be following

While the Prime Ministers Twitter page has understandably attracted thousands of followers since its debut in January,the person handling the account is careful about who the PMO is seen to be following. There are just 11 Twitter accounts that the PMO currently follows. Not surprisingly,this list includes the White House,the UK Prime Minister and the Russian President. The PMO also follows global multinational forums like the World Bank,UN,WHO,UNICEF and the African Union. Only two Indian entities make it to this select list one is the official handle of the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs and the other that of Sam Pitroda,an advisor to the PM on information infrastructure and innovations. Incidentally,Pitroda is not even very active on the site. His last post was on March 30!

Medical Problems

Early on Sunday morning,Apollo Hospital had a high-profile visitor none other than the Prime Minister himself. Manmohan Singh had gone there to see his brother-in-law Jaspal Singh who is suffering from cancer. The Prime Minister was originally slated to go on Thursday but it was called off after the PMO,which wanted to keep the visit under wraps,decided that the news of the impending visit had already spread and decided to postpone it.

Battle Stations

A tussle is on to lay claim to the recently vacated post of Joint Director of the Delhi zonal unit of the Enforcement Directorate. And what has complicated matters is that Prabhakant,the man who was heading the unit till last week,wants the job back and has joined the race. An IRS officer,Prabhakant had been at the helm of affairs for the past seven years but now has completed his tenure at ED and is being sent back to CBDT. Meanwhile,there are also reports that the Delhi unit of ED might be strengthened and converted into the Central unit and put under the charge of one of the two Special Directors in the organisation.

Divine Help

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Years of hard work and high-level engineering had gone into the landmark test of Agni-V on Thursday,but even scientists seek divine intervention to ensure the success of their efforts. Just ahead of the test launch of the missile,DRDO chief V K Saraswat visited a temple to seek the blessings of the almighty in ensuring that Indias dream of 30 years was realised without any problems.

Poll trick

As the Congress licks its wounds from the MCD elections,a Cabinet minister from Delhi has his own recipe for avoiding such disasters in future doing away with party symbols in municipal polls and delimitation. His contention is that the party symbol does not matter at that level because leadership should ideally come up from the grassroots from among the RWAs. And the ideal number of wards should be about 1.5 times the present 272. Desperate times seem to call for desperate measures.