Thursday, August 11, 2011

A Civil Servant With A Heart: Indira Gandhi’s trusted babu PC Alexander no more

PC Alexander, one of the most trusted bureaucrats of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, is no more. Alexander who was the principal secretary to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi from 1981 to 1985, died in a hospital in Chennai. He was 90. Only three days ago, one of his contemporaries BG Deshmukh, former cabinet secretary and principal secretary to three prime ministers --- Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh and Chandrashekhar, died in Pune.
In his condolence message, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called Alexander as one of the most outstanding civil servants and said: “it is indeed rare to come across a public servant with the qualities of the head and heart that Dr Alexander possessed”.
Born in Kerala on March 20, 1921, Alexander was a Rajya Sabha member from 2002-2008 and was a contender for the post of President of India, but wave went in favour of APJ Abdul Kalam. He also served as governor of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Alexander also served as Indian High Commissioner in London and held senior posts in the UN Civil Service for 10 years.

ICAS officers tune into FM
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said that officers of Indian Cost Accounts Service (ICAS) have a major role to play in facilitating the government in its decision making process through their inputs in solving complex pricing and costing issues. Mukherjee asked the ICAS officers to help in undertaking concurrent audit of escalations claims, examination of subsidy claims, designing cost accounting systems for the public organizations, looking into time and cost overruns in major projects, carrying out efficiency cum competitiveness studies etc. He was addressing the fresh batch of probationers of ICAS when they called on him in his office on Tuesday. Indian Cost Accounts Service is a professional accounts service manned by chartered and cost accountants. Sumit Bose, secretary (expenditure), DC Bajaj, additional chief adviser (cost) and other officers were also present on the occasion.

1 comment:

  1. The following information given by you is wrong. Please correct

    He also served as governor of Maharashtra from 1993 to 2002 and of Tamil Nadu from 1998 to 1990.

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