India Show in Hong Kong: Commerce secretary Rajeev Kher to lead India delegation

AWAY from the heat and dust of elections in India, there will be an “India Show” in Hong Kong between April 27 and 30. And senior bureaucrat of 1980 batch and Union commerce secretary Rajeev Kher will lead a delegation to this city state, known to be a bridgehead to do business with China. It is expected that Indian exporters will get an opportunity to forge…

YSR Congress nominates Gujarat IAS Devarapalli Kishore Rao from Bapatla in Seemandhra

Jagan Reddy in a rally

A GUJARAT cadre IAS officer Devarapalli Kishore Rao will be YSR Congress party nominee for Bapatla (SC) Lok Sabha seat that falls in Seemandhra region of Andhra Pradesh, according to latest reports. Rao, an officer of 1980 batch who resigned in December last year and had served mandatory 3-month-long notice period, considers himself retired though the government of Gujarat has not actually…

Pulok Chatterji has leftist leanings, never too enthusiastic about PM’s US focus, claims Baru book

Pulok Chatterji (right) with Manmohan Singh

IF Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s former media adviser Sanjaya Baru is to be believed, “affable, pipe-smoking and understated” Pulok Chatterji has leftist leanings. That’s not all. Baru’s new book, “The Accidental Prime Minister” also claims that Chatterji, thanks to his leftist leanings, was never too enthusiastic about Dr Singh’s focus on improving relations with US, a serious charge hurled against one of the top bureaucrats of UPA’s rule for the last 10 years. In UPA-I, Chatterji was a powerful…

Suitable Indian officials asked to apply for public policy programmes in South Korea’s KDI

SOUTH Korea’s KDI School has invited applications for master of public policy and master of development policy, the programmes which will begin from September 15, 2014. DoPT’s training division has invited applications from suitable officers who need to…

Corridors of Inequality: How non-IAS officers belonging to 36 services get discriminated

THE empanelment for posts at the level of joint secretary and joint secretary equivalent is “a thesis on inequality, unfairness, hegemony, greed and injustice”, says Hyderabad-based Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Satya Prasant P in a blog post. His argument? Non-IAS officers are simply “trampled by the IAS lobby when it comes to appointments under the Central Staffing Scheme through the highly skewed process of empanelment.” In a well-researched piece, Satya Prasant talks about some “deliberate manmade procedural bottlenecks” which actually hamper…

What Sanjaya Baru’s book says about TKA Nair and Pulok Chatterji; PMO reacts

SANJAYA Baru, former media adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called PM’s adviser TKA Nair “a bureaucratic lightweight” who except for a stint in the IK Gujral’s PMO, had neither held the rank of secretary in “any of the powerful ministries on Raisina Hill-home, finance and defence-nor in any key economic ministry”. Baru’s 301-page book titled “The Accidental Prime Minister--The Making and Unmaking Of Manmohan Singh”, published by Penguin, has not even spared current principal secretary Pulok Chatterji, who “like Nair, suffered from…

P Chidambaram opposes bureaucrats’ second innings in politics, but why?

No Politics Please, We Are Babus!

AT A time when more and more retired IAS and IPS offers are contesting the current Lok Sabha elections, senior Congress leader and Union finance minister P Chidambaram has aired his views against such a trend, arguing that it may set a dangerous precedence. The seasoned lawyer-turned politician who has opted out of the fray in favour of his son Karti Chidambaram this time, said that the Constitution…

List of two dozen IAS, IPS, IRS, IFS officers contesting 2014 Lok Sabha polls

Yashwant Sinha, Ajit Jogi, Manishankar Aiyer --- all these and many more known names in Indian politics have one thing in common. All of them excelled as bureaucrats before joining the political bandwagon and deciding to come to Parliament though a harder route — election. As the world’s biggest election process is currently underway in India, BoI here presents a list of 24 contenders who earlier had worked IAS, IPS, IFS, IRS etc. They…

EC-Mamata Row: Who are the IAS, IPS officers Banerjee agrees to transfer, “only for time being”?

THERE is nothing unusual in Election Commission’s transfer-dictate to bureaucrats in states. But West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s  threatening on Monday not to follow the EC order would have created an unprecedented constitutional crisis which was averted only after Didi blinked on the next day and agreed to follow the poll panel’s order. Her face-saver: transfers would be made "only for the time being”. First, here are the names of the bureaucrats who Banerjee had initially refused to…

Battle of Dausa: Brothers and former IPS officers enter into political big fight

Meena Brothers

Dausa Lok Sabha seat in east Rajasthan is witnessing an electoral battle between two former IPS officers, Namo Narain Meena of 1969 batch and Harish Chandra Meena of 1976 batch. If you are not convinced that it’s something unusual, here is more. Namo Narain, union minister of state for finance and the Congress candidates is the elder brother of the BJP candidate…