Dilli Ka Babu: Breaking norms

Breaking norms

Home minister Rajnath Singh has been showing signs of a new assertiveness of late. Recently, Mr Singh surprised babu-watchers by transferring 10 joint secretaries in one fell swoop. While it’s not clear whether the reshuffle was effected with the approval of the mighty Prime Minister’s Office, sources say that it is rare for a home minister to order a reshuffle of this scale.

Mr Singh, sources say, has reassigned positions which were held by IAS officers to IPS officers, a move that has naturally caused much heartburn among the IAS officers. A 1986-batch IPS officer M.A. Ganapathy, who has worked with Mr Singh before as officer on special duty, will now head the Internal Security-1 division, which monitors terror organisations and drug trafficking.

The IAS officer “ousted” by Mr Ganapathy is Rakesh Singh, who will now look after the Union territories. Curiously, one of the “unhappy” joint secretaries transferred by Mr Rajnath Singh, has a votary in secretary, border management, Sneh Lata Kumar, who is lobbying hard to retain the officer, described as “Man Friday”. Will Mr Rajnath Singh bend?

Babu vs babu

Public spats between senior bureaucrats have become distressingly frequent in Karna-taka, causing much embarrassment to chief minister Siddaramiah’s government. The most recent episode, and by all accounts still ongoing, is the one involving 1996-batch IAS officer Rashmi V. Mahesh, director-general of Administrative Training Institute in Mysore, and her predecessor Amita Prasad.

The media has been going to town ever since Ms Mahesh was attacked by some former employees of the institute. She has demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into alleged financial irregularities at the institute during Ms Prasad’s tenure.

Sources also report that a spat between babus took place in the midst of a high-level meeting at the chief minister’s residence between additional chief secretary for commerce and industry, K. Ratna Prabha and the agriculture minister Krishna Byre Gowda and the chief minister’s additional chief secretary D.N. Narasimha Raju.

An embarrased Siddaramiah later had to pacify the enraged babus!
Clearly, such incidents don’t do the state government any credit.