Dilli Ka Babu
Diplomatic crisis
New external affairs minister Salman Khurshid has many things on his plate, not the least being finding foreign service officers to fill ambassadorial vacancies coming up next mid-year. The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is reportedly falling short of 23 officials for the posts of ambassadors and high commissioners. For some time now the MEA has been dragging its feet when it comes to staffing. Foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai has less than a year to go before his term ends but no name recommendations have been made. Meanwhile, joint secretaries are clearly overworked. Damu Ravi, sources say, is handling 19 Latin American countries in addition to 20 Caribbean nations.
But the MEA has reportedly finalised a plan to meet the exigency. Sources say that it hopes to add 50 more posts, of which only 35 will be for IFS officers. This reported move has upset junior-level officers who feel that their career advancement will be hampered. All eyes are now on Mr Khurshid to solve this vexed issue.
Loyalty factor
In a move that both defies the Central government as well as questions the ethics and practices followed by government officials, many of Bihar’s babus have gone all out to show their support for chief minister Nitish Kumar on the issue of granting Bihar special category status, already rejected by the Centre.
The issue came to the fore when a district agriculture officer of Jamui district, Manoj Kumar, released an advertisement in a local newspaper welcoming Nitish Kumar on his visit to the district. But the district officer is only the least of them, observers point out. In recent weeks several senior IAS officers like principal secretary (health), Vyas Ji, secretary planning and development, Vijay Prakash, and principal secretary (education) Amarjeet Sinha, to name a few, have all been chorusing opinion pieces in local newspapers justifying the demand for special status sought by Nitish Kumar.
Metro blues
Retired Delhi Metro chief E. Sreedharan may be admired across the nation, but not by a section of Kerala’s bureaucrats, where he is in the middle of a babu feud, which may turn into a political battle. Apparently, not many Kerala IAS officers are amenable to Mr Sreedharan’s role in the Kochi Metro project. It seems the former Delhi Metro chief has been insisting that the project be executed only by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. Meanwhile, urban development secretary Sudhir Krishna believes that the DMRC cannot take up the project.
Now, state transport secretary Tom Jose, who belongs to the 1984 batch of the Kerala cadre, has written to Mr Krishna opposing the attempt to rope in Mr Sreedharan. Evidently, he’s not the only one against Mr Sreedharan. The babus in the state are now divided on the issue and the Opposition parties are planning to turn this into a political issue.
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