Turf war

PLANNING Commission deputy chairman K C Pant, who seems to have been eased out of the negotiations with the Hurriyat Conference in Kashmir by Wajahat Habibullah, is now sparring with Health Minister C P Thakur over who should administer the national population stabilisation fund. Prime Minister Vajpayee announced the creation of the fund in July 2000 after the new population policy was adopted.

Already, the finance ministry has allocated Rs 100 crore. But not a penny has been spent in the last two years since it is yet to be decided who gets to handle the money.

The national population commission, which comes under the Planning Commission, would like to muscle into the domain of the health ministry which is the line ministry for population issues, since the department of family welfare is part of its setup. The finance ministry which is caught in the middle of the turf war has left the issue to the Cabinet.

After Vajpayee asked that a compromise be worked out, Thakur sent a note suggesting that the prime minister be made chairman of the population fund and both Pant and he be installed as deputy chairmen. Conscious that the department of family welfare has precedent on its side and has put up a strong case in its note to the Cabinet, Pant recently invited Thakur to a meeting and requested his ministry to withdraw the note. Thakur refused.

The latest in the on-going turf battle is that the population commission is now trying to establish legitimacy in this sector through the backdoor by writing to the Registrar General of India announcing that it plans to hold a symposium on infant mortality completely ignoring the line ministry.

Stars and their style

WERE the film stars helping out in the recent assembly poll campaign, invited so as to present their views on politics or to do what they are best at: entertain, Bollywood style? The BJP’s Bollywood representatives — Vinod Khanna and Shatrughan Sinha — took themselves a trifle too seriously, Khanna made it clear that elections are a serious business and he was not at the rallies to entertain.

On the other hand, Chi Chi’s company, Govinda Entertainment No 1, gave the Congress party value for money. The actor made no attempt at speech making but simply provided an uninterrupted programme of songs and dances with special lighting and a bump and grind show from the chorus line. Which is why it was he rather than the BJP Bollywood heavyweights who gave the Samajwadi Party’s Amitabh Bachchan a run for his money.

Too little, too late

SHAILAJA Chandra superceded five secretaries from the Union Territory (UT) cadre to become the chief secretary of Delhi. At her first official meeting her male colleagues who were senior to her in the cadre did not stand up to greet the new boss as is customary. The exception was Finance Secretary Ramesh Chandra, who happens to be Chandra’s husband.

Ramesh Chandra, in fact, was overlooked for empanelment as additional secretary and secretary to the Central Government and his career prospects suffered because of a 10-year-old charge that he had yielded to political pressure in the appointment of some teachers to the New Delhi Municipal Committee schools. After a decade, just two months before his retirement, Chandra has finally been exonerated by the CVC and the department of personnel. Thanks to the inexcusable delay by the home ministry in processing this relatively minor complaint Chandra’s chances of career advancement were effectively scotched.

Did someone deliberately drag his feet in the matter? After the CVC cleared him last July, the home ministry actually recommended that it should reconsider!

Skies jammed

AIR traffic at Lucknow airport was totally skewed up and there were long delays for passengers on commercial flights. Even senior political leaders were at times grounded since VVIPs like Atal Behari Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi and L K Advani got precedence for airspace. Sports minister Uma Bharati, forced to wait for two hours in her helicopter, bonded with Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav who too was sitting patiently at the airport lounge. Laloo in his inimitable style noted that so many planes were taking off and landing, he thought that war had been declared!

Penny wise, pound foolish

AS urban development minister, Jagmohan concentrated on demolitions of unauthorised structures. As culture minister he is focusing on cutting costs. The ministry recently ordered the committee, headed by former culture secretary M Vardarajan which is making an inventory of the two and a half lakh odd artifacts owned by the National Museum, to discontinue the job after April. The haste to wind up the committee is because the cost works out to Rs 75,000 a month, including a modest honorarium of a Rs 15,000 for Vardarajan.

It is felt that the ASI can complete the rest of the inventory. Considering that the Vardarajan committee has completed 80 % of the assigned task, it makes little sense to abandon the job at this late stage. Objects worth hundreds of crores are stored in the museum’s godowns and if all are not accounted for, there is a danger that they could be removed or replaced.

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