Delhi confidential: Quick Call

The ministry has appointed 1997-batch IAS officer Santosh Kumar Mall in place of Avinash Dikshit whose term ended early April.

One of the vacant positions to have been filled up perhaps the quickest in the Human Resource Development Ministry, which is led by Smriti Irani, is that of the Commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan. The ministry has appointed 1997-batch IAS officer Santosh Kumar Mall in place of Avinash Dikshit whose term ended early April. Before this, Mall was private secretary to Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh. The appointment comes at a time when several other posts, including that of CBSE chairperson, NCERT director, vice-chancellors of some Central Universities as well as the new ICSSR council are yet to be filled up.

Listing Achievements
With May 26 — the day the Modi government completes one year in office — approaching, all central government ministries are in an overdrive to cull out “success stories” from their respective arenas. While the emphasis is on putting names and faces to the various flagship schemes of the government, even initiatives like e-ticketing for Taj Mahal are being included in the list of success stories. Top I&B Ministry officials have been busy holding review meetings of the achievements the government wishes to highlight and a list of over 100 initiatives is being prepared to be released as a compendium.

Opening The Gates
Ushering in greater transparency and convenience, the Supreme Court has allowed law school students from across the country to apply online for selection as law clerk-cum-research assistant. This is the first time that the applications could come from any law college accredited by the Bar Council of India and the applicants would be able to apply online. The applications have been invited in conformity with the new norms, which has done away with the policy of picking students only from a select few empanelled institutes. A national-level written examination would be conducted at four cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata.

The Dilemma
The Health Ministry is faced with a strange dilemma over an upcoming tax event organised by an international consortium, sponsors of which include several tobacco companies. Insiders admit that it is not proper for senior government functionaries to attend the event. Meanwhile, the name of MoS Finance Jayant Sinha has been removed from the list of confirmed attendees to the event.

Awaiting Update
Rashtrapati Bhawan it seems has not updated its mailing list in quite a while. It started with writer William Dalrymple’s plea that he should be removed from the list. Since then over the last more than a week a host of others have made the same plea to the office of the first citizen.

Source:: Indian Express