Hound and Hare
In tune with his time-tested strategy of hunting with the hound and running with the hare, the Chief Minister Harish Rawat has involved Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) in a tricky game. He has requested it to extend the term of the present Chief Secretary Rakesh Sharma, who is slated to retire on October 31, by six months. And, at the same time, he has kept on hold the pending transfers of the important bureaucrats on the assumption that if his prayer for Sharma’s extension is not granted and Shatrudhan Singh, Uttarakhand cadre’s senior IAS officer who would be next CS of Uttarakhand after Sharma retires, can maneuver things to constitute his team. Notably, with DoPT having relieved Singh from Union Industry Ministry, decks are cleared for him to join the babudom of his native state. “Harish Rawat cannot disappoint Sharma. Hence, his DoPT subterfuge,” said a State watcher. Besides, 2016 being an election year with the next Assembly election slated in early 2017, Rawat has taken recourse to a kind of gambling, keeping all options open. His tell-tale message is that he would ask for Sharma’s extension and keeps space clear for Singh’s ascendency to constitute his own team keeping in view the importance of the election year 2016. He has again proved he is unbeatable in the art of political chicanery, said a notable detractor of the CM.
Punching Bags
The common people seem to have been caught in a kind of pincer attack with the Centre changing the funding pattern of several projects, slashing its share and the State Government hell-bent on increasing revenue receipts by hiked taxes. They are least bothered about the war of words continuing on the political front. While the Centre boasts they have increased the states’ share from the previous 32 to 42 percent of central tax revenue the state complains over the Centre slashing its coffers by `3000 crore per annum by the change of the project funding pattern. Things reaching crescendo with the Assembly election drawing near, it is driving the commoners to gloomy frustration as the state government has recently slapped them with hiked base charges of VAT on petrol i.e. Rs 17 per litre and cess on ground water. The state government resorting to tough fiscal measures, bidding adieu to its customary populist profligacy, is bleeding them white, they say. They ask if there would be any relief for them with both Centre and state tightening their respective purse strings and making the common people the proverbial punching bags.