Delhi Confidential: Return List

Rail Bhawan officials were slightly flummoxed recently when they noticed that money earned for the service, as reflected in the books, was not really as huge as they should have been.

All of them left the party in the last four or five years, especially in the run-up to and after bifurcation of the state.

Oommen Chandy, the newly AICC -appointed general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh, can nowadays be seen with a sheet of paper. It is a list of names of leaders who could be brought back to the Congress in Andhra Pradesh. All of them left the party in the last four or five years, especially in the run-up to and after bifurcation of the state. And the first on the list of leaders likely to rejoin the party is former Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy.

Another Tug of War?

The news of alleged hacking of the official email ID of Rajeev Singh, former in charge of the Nirav Modi case, has led to speculation that it is another chapter added to the tug of war between two senior officials of the CBI. Singh, who was heading the Banking and Securities Fraud Cell of the agency, was recently repatriated to his parent cadre prematurely. His email had been used to send a phishing mail to 30,000 random recipients.

Advance Freight

Riding on coal traffic, Indian Railways has been loading more freight this fiscal compared to the same period last year. However, Rail Bhawan officials were slightly flummoxed recently when they noticed that money earned for the service, as reflected in the books, was not really as huge as they should have been. It finally dawned on them that the transporter had already taken almost Rs 5,000 crore in advance from NTPC, a major client, on the last day of the last fiscal, just in time to end the year with a less embarrassing operating ratio. A part of the freight being carried now is against that payment.

Bleak Scenario

With every passing day, chances of the NDA-II government releasing a new education policy seems bleaker. First, the HRD Ministry, under Smriti Irani, set up a panel. This committee’s report served no purpose as the ministry constituted a new panel, under scientist K Kasturirangan, after Prakash Javadekar took over. The Kasturirangan panel’s deadline has been extended twice and it was suppose to complete its task by the end of this month. But now the government is set to extend the deadline again – until August 31. At this rate, it seems unlikely that a policy will be finalised and passed by Parliament before the next General Election.