NOW here’s a dubious record. In less than a year, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) sent three competent
Chairmen packing. Pradeep Kumar, JS Maini and N Gokulram, belonging to the Haryana, Punjab and Tamil Nadu cadres, respectively, were reportedly shown the door for not being amenable to the unreasonable diktats of the Union Minister for Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, TR Baalu. Obviously, the reason cited by the Minister is lack of performance and delay on the officers’ part.
However, there is morethan meets the eye. NHAI, whose Chairman has a fixed tenure of three years extendable to five years – is responsible for the development, maintenance and management of National Highways entrusted to it. The Government of India has launched major initiatives to upgrade and strengthen National Highways through various
phases of the National Highways development project. Of the 65,569-km length of National Highways in the country, Tamil Nadu has about 4,183 km. Sources say Baalu was desperate to have all the major roads in the state declared as National Highways so that he could make political capital of it during election
He kept pressuring the Chairmen to oblige him. When they refused to deviate from the stated policy of NHAI, Baalu took advantage of the compulsions of coalition government and got them shunted out. The fate of the fourth and current Chairman, Brajeshwar Singh, an IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, hangs in the balance.
Pranab, Menon’s
hide-and-seek
A Minister and Secretary usually work in unison but it so happens that Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon have not met since the UPA government won the no-confidence motion on the nuclear deal. The deal has necessitated frequent trips by both babu and babu moshai to the US for negotiations with their counterparts. Strangely, Menon lands in the US after Mukherjee’s return to India and comes back only after
the Minister has once again flown to Washington. And, if by chance both are in the US at the same time, Menon goes missing.
South Block mandarins were puzzled as to whether this was due to sheer coincidence or deteriorating relations between the two, until one day the mystery behind the apparent hide-and-seek was solved. Menon’s US based son is getting married soon and he devotes his time to making arrangements for the wedding rather than meeting the Minister.
Missing the wood
for the trees
WHAT is done by bureaucrats is often undone by citizens. Former Environment Secretary of the Delhi government Naini Jaiseelan was deeply concerned about the encroachment on Delhi’s green cover and the resultant loss of forests. She came up with the idea of enclosing the entire green belt with a high boundary wall made of iron bars.
Some of her junior officers, who did not view the forest in isolation from the community surrounding it, advised her against such an approach. She, however, went ahead with her project and allocated Rs 3 crore for it. The forest was duly encircled by a wall constructed of iron bars.
By the time she left Delhi to take up her new assignment as Chief Secretary of Puducherry, the citizens of
Delhi, living up to their reputation, had dismantled virtually every iron bar for far more important uses in their
homes than protecting a silly forest. She is now Adviser, Planning Commission.
Janus as lobbyist
THE tug of war over the coveted post of Home Secretary of the Union Territory of Chandigarh has finally ended. Ram Niwas, a 1985-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, has emerged the winner. Lobbying started after the post fell vacant in March this year. Various groups with clout jumped into the fray with their own lists of high flying babus as well as Dalit aspirants. On at least four occasions, the Home Ministry rejected the list for warded by Haryana Chief
Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda through the UT Administrator, Gen SF Rodrigues, to Home Minister Shivraj Patil.
This time, Hooda, while taking credit in the state for sending a Dalits-only list, surreptitiously threw his weight behind Ram Niwas, an OBC officer, and thus killed two birds with a single stroke. Rodrigues, a powerful officer in the Home Ministry and a prominent builder combined to ensure that the recommendation was not sent back, and Ram Niwas got the post.
