P Muralidhar Rao
BJP president J P Nadda on Tuesday appointed party general secretary P Muralidhar Rao as the Centre’s observer to elect a Leader of Opposition in Jharkhand Assembly. While the party won 25 seats in the 81-member House, Rao’s job will be to make all of them agree to former Jharkhand CM Babulal Marandi taking the post. Marandi’s JVM(P), which had split from the BJP, has just merged back with the saffron party. Although Marandi could not bring two fellow MLAs along with him to the BJP, it seems the party leadership is determined to assign him the job of Leader of Opposition. On Tuesday, Nadda also appointed another BJP general secretary, Saroj Pande, to oversee the election of a legislature party leader for BJP in Delhi Assembly, where the party’s tally has gone up from three to eight. Both Rao and Pande have tough jobs ahead.
In Memory
Less than a week after the government named two prominent institutes under the External Affairs Ministry after former minister Sushma Swaraj, the government has decided to honour, in a similar manner, another late leader who held an important portfolio in the previous term of the Narendra Modi government. The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, a premier defence think tank, has been rechristened Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. The government said in a statement it has been done to to “honour the commitment and legacy” of the former Defence minister”. The IDSA is headed by the Defence Minister.
Recruitment On Track
The Railways had written to UPSC and asked it to withdraw the indent it had placed to recruit officers from Civil Services Examination and the Engineering Services Examination for this year since all eight Group-A services are slated to be merged into a single Indian Railway Management Service. The UPSC, however, brought out examination notification recently which indicated that recruitment to the Railway services are also on the cards through UPSC exams this year. It turns out that irrespective of the notification, the vacancy against each Railway service would be nil, as the Railways would indicate that it does not intend to recruit anyone from these exams for its eight organised services.