Myopic Minister
With the Government departments and the private companies inclined to flaunt their achievements as well as the information about the products they are churning out in the markets, hoardings keep mushrooming everywhere in Dehradun. There is hardly any place in the city where such hoardings are not visible. At the same time, the municipal corporation Dehradun earn a lot by way of tax on such hoardings. However, a hyper-active minister having recently sent advisory to the civic body, prohibiting such indiscriminate display of hoardings on the bustling city areas, has put the civic body in the soup. MCD is indeed under stress, wondering whether they should float fresh tenders for such hoardings. In case the government decides to remove hoardings after they are installed it would land them in embarrassment of litigation. With the tender process being kept in abeyance, the agencies are earning hugely from the advertisers for displaying their hoardings while the municipal corporation is getting nothing. The worried civic body officials say that if this logjam continues the corporation, already grappling with severe resource crunch, would find it difficult even to clear the salaries of its employees.
Humbled babus
The dignity of the Cabinet meeting seems to have been restored after the BJP-helmed Government changed the practice prevailing during the previous regime of the media adviser of the Chief Minister, a political appointee, had briefed the press fairly after a cabinet meeting was over. Ideally, either the Chief Minister or a Minister or the Chief Secretary do the briefing. Now, rupturing the practice, nurtured under the previous dispensation, the new government authorized a senior cabinet minister to do the cabinet briefing in the presence of the senior bureaucrats. However, the new arrangement, though hailed by the votaries of the traditions, disappointed some Babus who made it a habit to feel an exaggerated sense of self- importance while being clicked as sitting on the right side of the chief secretary during the briefing. This time, the minister himself hogging the limelight, they had to eat a humble pie being shoved to the background, to their impotent resentment.