Staying Put

Azad was one of the four ministers who were said to have offered to work for the party and relinquish their ministerial positions.

Staying Put

The office staff of Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad spent most of Wednesday clarifying to callers and visitors that he was not relinquishing his post anytime soon and that reports that he had made an offer to quit were not correct. Azad was one of the four ministers who were said to have offered to work for the party and relinquish their ministerial positions. The staff was,however,careful to add that Azad was already doing party work as general secretary for three states and was available for any other assignment that the leadership wanted him to take.

REBELS WITH A CAUSE

SINGLED out for action by their party,the eight Congress Lok Sabha members from Telangana seem to share a distinct bonding now. Suspended from the House for four days,the entire pack sporting black bands and brass badges embossed with a Telangana map started the day with a demonstration near the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the Parliament House complex. Cutting themselves off from other party colleagues,they spent the rest of the time deliberating in a corner of the Central Hall. The MPs did their best to send the message that if the party leadership continues to take a tough stand against them,they would persist with their rebellion rather than falling in line.

BELATED APOLOGY

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DAYS after he caused ripples in the Congress by publicly criticising the Maharashtra government for its decision-deficit,South Mumbai MP Milind Deora is learnt to have called up Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan to apologise. The party high command is said to have had a word with the young MP over this. His telephone call to the Chief Minister came after the latters meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

LATERAL THINKING

THE government seems to be pushing ahead the idea of hiring at top levels of bureaucracy from varying fields such as academia,research and private sector. At the Civil Services Day last weekend,this idea,contained in one of the documents,caught the eyes of many officers. It was mentioned that the lack of lateral hirings at the top of the bureaucracy was resulting in complacency in the existing civil service workforce,apart from creating a dearth of expertise in certain areas. In this context,the example of the United Kingdom was cited,where apparently 30 per cent of the vacancies at the top three levels of the civil services have been openly advertised in the last few years.

TRAIN HALT

A MINI train that has been the star attraction at National Bal Bhawan for years has not been running for some time now. Brought in by Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru,the mini train complete with its own station has hosted many dignitaries in its time including Jacqueline Kennedy. However,now it is faced with an unscheduled and unprecedented halt. The reason: the driver trained to run it on its special gauge track has retired and no one else is trained to drive it. Last heard,attempts are being made to train existing staffers to help run the stalled locomotive.