When Satyagopal, a 1988-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT cadre, was shifted on February 11 to Delhi from Diu, Daman and Dadra & Nagar Haveli, where he had worked as an administrator, he did his best (read used his BJP connections) to stave off the transfer. The officer is close to two Sinhas from Bihar, Yashwant and Shatrughan. He had had a controversial tenure. A Sai Baba devotee, he reportedly begins his day in the after noon and had come under flak for responding to situations most unlike a public servant. He was linked with the atrocities on Scheduled Caste officers and the fake ration card scandal. Nand Lal Singh, an official of DANICS posted in Daman, had filed several complaints regarding Satyagopal’s misbehaviour and incompetency with the Home Ministry but nobody paid any heed.
Even Natubhai Patel, MP of Diu, Daman and Dadra & Nagar Haveli and member of the Home Ministry’s standing committee, has complained about administrative irregularities and misuse of portfolio during Satyagopal’s tenure and an inquiry has been instituted. As a result, when he finally arrived in Delhi, Sheila Dikshit reportedly refused to take him into her government. He ultimately joined the Chandigarh administration.
Top cop with a poetic bent
SENIOR retired bureaucrats like Maharashtra State Election Commissioner Neela Satyanarayan have dabbled in poetry and earned quite a name for themselves. In comparison, one rarely hears of a senior cop dabbling in poetry. So Mohammad Quaiser Khalid is in a league of his own. The 1997-batch IPS officer quietly slips into penning a mushaira whenever time and energy permit it. In uniform, however, Khalid is Deputy Commissioner of Police, Port Zone, and deals with such issues as Somali pirates and ship movements off the coast of Mumbai.
The policeman-poet has a BA (Honours) degree acquired in Bihar. To him, literature is a means of conveying one’s perception of social situations. He also wants to demolish the stereo type image of a shayar as a man with a broken heart. The young cop has so far written more than 150 poems and is planning to bring out a book by the end of the year.
Lalli finds succour in tantrism
BS Lalli, former Prasar Bharati CEO, was recently seen entering the dreaded portals of the CBI office. A once all powerful though diminutive media czar, Lalli was visibly finding it tough to straighten his drooping shoulders under the burden of accusations he is fielding. He has reportedly taken his problems to some tantriks and astrologers who are working as hard as the CBI to control his future.
Perhaps emboldened by them, he has moved the court for an early hearing. And, sources quip, he has more visitors at home now than when he was in office – with one difference: earlier favour-seekers would try to appease him, now he bows and scrapes before various pandits and maulvis. People say he is perennially at the front door – seeing off one and welcoming another.
Kutty Nair under attack
The Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, TKA Nair, who is also known as Kutty Nair, is surprisingly under attack in Delhi’s power circles and the media. Now, this is something that’s happening for the first time. Nobody dares to attack the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. Whoever dared to do it in the past was shown the door.
It all started with the controversy regarding the appointment of PJ Thomas as CVC and the PM’s statement in Parliament that the note prepared by the DoPT did not contain the information about the chargesheet. Immediately after this, the Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly raised the issue and stalled the House. The shrewd Prithviraj Chavan, who knows by whom the PM is briefed before giving a statement in Parliament, acted quickly. Within a day or so, a weekly magazine published a story on how Kutty Nair was introduced into the PMO with the help of NN Vohra and Rashpal Malhotra, Director-General of CRRID, Chandigarh. The story narrates Nair’s rise in the PMO and his fondness for officers from Kerala.
The fact is that the same set that is friendly with Nair in Delhi is equally pally with Chavan in Mumbai. But, was the race wrong when it coined the adage, “As you sow, so shall you reap”?
