Radha Mohan Singh
After the Union cabinet meeting on Wednesday, senior ministers were embarrassed when Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked how many of them had spent a night at a Dalit village. Modi had asked his party MPs to spend a night in Dalit-dominated villages to restore the faith of the community in the BJP. According to sources, Radha Mohan Singh was the only minister to have completed that task. The ministers said they would definitely complete it before Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, launched by the PM on April 14, ends on May 5. The PM has asked a ministerial team to submit a report on the activities of party MPs during the Abhiyan.
Cold Feet
The HRD Ministry just can’t seem to make up its mind on appointments. Last year, it developed cold feet before announcing the appointment of scientist Anil Kakodkar as chairman of IIT-Roorkee. Then it had President Ram Nath Kovind withdraw his assent to the appointment of Swapan Kumar Dutta as head of Visva Bharati University. In the latest instance, the ministry is learnt to have withdrawn the file carrying names of its nominees for the chairmanship of IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Bhilai and IIT Dharwad. The buzz is that the President’s office wasn’t happy with the names proposed by the ministry — Gautam N Mehra, chairman of Savita Oil Technologies, for IIT-Bhilai; Ravi Pandit, co-founder of KPIT Technologies, for IIT Dharwad’ and Vikram Shroff, executive director of UPL Group, for IIT Gandhinagar.
Views On Vote
The Election Commission dispatched letters to 11 former Chief Election Commissioners (CECs) on April 17 inviting them to a roundtable discussion on “emerging challenges in election management”. The letter seeks to know their availability on May 21. Although the invitation does not provide a detailed agenda for the discussion, a fly on the wall tells us, the present Commission is keen to seek views of former CECs on how to tackle use of money power in elections, the problem of fake news ahead of polls and manipulation of voters and potential voters on social media, as in the case of the Cambridge Analytica controversy in the US.