Ajay Maken
Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken is in Jaipur, busy firefighting to save the Ashok Gehlot government. While it was personally a happy day for Maken, he could not celebrate it with family. His son, Aujaswi, scored 97.5 per cent in best of four subjects in CBSE Class XII — the results were declared on Monday. Maken did not distribute sweets, but those in Jaipur say there was celebration in the Gehlot camp and sweets were distributed, although likely for a different reason. The Gehlot camp has claimed that a majority of Congress MLAs turned up for the legislature party meeting and called for a celebration.
No Extension
The tenure of Pravin Srivastava, the country’s chief statistician and Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, ends on August 31. While a proposal for extending his tenure was considered, it is learnt that this was returned last week from the PMO without approval. An officer of 1983-batch Indian Statistical Service, Srivastava was appointed in October 2018. The ministry faced multiple controversies related to data — be it employment or GDP computation — during his tenure. The appointment process of Secretary to this ministry is different from others, and earlier academics such as Pronab Sen and T C A Anant have held this post. Advertisement may now be issued for Srivastava’s replacement.
Diplomat Decisions
The Ministry of External Affairs is planning to send Vikram Doraiswami, currently Additional Secretary (International Organisations and Summits), as the next envoy to Bangladesh, and Rudrendra Tandon, currently India’s envoy to ASEAN, as the envoy to Afghanistan. South Block has announced that Hemant Kotalwar, who is Joint Secretary (National Security Council Secretariat), will be the next envoy to Czech Republic.