The offices, including the Governor’s and CM’s, will be closed in Jammu in the weekend and open in Srinagar on May 7.
It has been more than a week since BJP ministers, excluding Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, resigned from the Mehbooba Mufti-led Jammu and Kashmir government to enable the party to get fresh faces. Deliberations have been intense in the state as well as in the national capital, but no decision has been taken. Party sources said one reason for the delay is the biannual durbar move. The offices, including the Governor’s and CM’s, will be closed in Jammu in the weekend and open in Srinagar on May 7. The discussions, however, will continue in Delhi and Srinagar, the sources added.
Different path
At a time when the talk in political circles is all about Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s son B S Yathindra’s debut assembly elections and his main opponent B S Yeddyurappa’s son B Y Vijayendra’s heartburn over not getting a party ticket, there is an interesting story from Kerala. Unlike many of the sons and daughters of politicians who have joined politics, senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala’s son Ramit has bagged the 210th rank in the civil services exam 2017 conducted by the UPSC. Chennithala is the leader of the opposition in the Kerala Assembly.
Poetic Interlude
Even as doctors at AIIMS continued to strike, allegedly after a faculty member slapped a resident doctor, at the Safdarjung Platinum Jubilee celebrations on Friday, Union minister Mahesh Sharma, who is a doctor, spoke about how he had touched the feet of one of his teachers who had slapped him twice during his days as a medical student. How the audience — comprising medical students to a great extent — took the statement was not clear, but it was Health Minister J P Nadda who took them by surprise by reciting the Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from memory. The compere quoted the last few lines when Nadda got up and said it is a very beautiful poem, and that he would like to tell the audience how it starts.
Fast Track
At a review meeting on logistics by a top functionary of the PMO recently, it was pointed out that Railways takes a long time — around 60 hours — to carry containers from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust to Tughlaqabad in Delhi whereas trucks take much less time to do the same. When the Commerce and Industry Ministry urged Railways to speed up the process, Railway officials said they have constraints of line capacity and safety-related matters. Irked by these “excuses”, the top functionary chairing the meeting apparently sarcastically told the Commerce and Industry officials to let Railways be, as “they have too many constraints”, and carry the containers on trucks.