Rights or Wrong: Didi’s mamata for West Bengal forces Rail files to land up in Kolkata

WHO will deny that railway minister Mamata Banerjee has been out of the track when it comes to executing work in Rail Bhawan? From the day she took charge as the railway minister, incidentally in Kolkata rather than Delhi, she has been camping more in West Bengal eying the hot seat in Writers Building. And there were a number of occasion, senior officials have flown to Kolkata carrying official files for clearances.
The Indian railways, for the first time, has officially accepted that files were indeed carried to Kolkata for Banerjee to consider though it played down the events saying it was done only in emergency cases. “It is clarified that hardly ever files have been carried to Kolkata for clearing from the Railway Minister, except in a few emergency cases,” said an official statement from the spokesperson clarifying the news item related to expenditure on movement of official files published in a section of media on August 23, 2010. It has further termed the news item “erroneous” which said that the railways spent around Rs11 lakhs in one year for sending file-carrying officials to Kolkata!

What make retired NE bureaucrats shine?

Harishankar Brahma, a 1975 batch Andhra Pradesh cadre IAS and former power secretary, has been appointed as an Election Commissioner. That he belongs to ST and North East is believed to have helped him piping many other bureaucrat contenders for this coveted post. Brahma is the second person from the North East after JM Lyngdoh, who retired as Chief Election Commissioner in 2004, to become Election Commissioner. A former IPS officer RS Mushahary was made Governor of Meghalaya by the UPA government.

Action and Appointments

The three-day DGPs/IGPs conference, organized by the Intelligence Bureau will be held in New Delhi from Wednesday. It will be inaugurated by the Union home minister P Chidambaram. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will address the conference on Thursday.