GRAPEVINE

Neither Left nor Right, only Centre

Last week, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla held a jam-packed press conference to share details of the 12th BRICS Parliamentary Forum. Journalists asked pointed questions about the two-day (October 26-27) event, and Birla answered them with ease. International media were also present at the media conference. Then came some uncomfortable questions for Birla from reporters, ranging from the impeachment motion to remove CEC Gyanesh Kumar to Justice Verma, to the merger of TMC with a nondescript party, NCPI, and to the inordinate delay in proroguing the Monsoon Session. Birla took questions from every corner of the conference hall, and journalists mentioned from which side of the hall, left or right, they were calling. One of the reporters, when he insisted that he was calling from the left side of the hall, Birla quipped, “I can hear questions coming from both the left and right sides, but I don’t belong to either side, as I am looking straight in the centre”.

Why DCC was dissolved?

Still, people can’t understand why the Government dissolved the Digital Communication Commission (DCC), the high-powered body for telecom affairs, last month. The DCC was established as the Telecom Commission in 1989, and its name changed in 2018. DCC is the final decision-making body on telecom and IT affairs, comprising many ministry secretaries.  While DCC members are tight-lipped, former members are wondering why the PMO decided to dissolve it. Grapevine has it that a large umbrella with a new definition of digitised communications platforms is likely to be created under the hawk-eyed precincts of Sewa Teerth.

Kaun Mantri, Kaun sa CM

Speculations have gone rife after several verified social media posts during the last two days have claimed that couple of Union Ministers have already tendered their resignations. The grapevine is that both are to be replaced by two sitting Chief Ministers. Now inquisitive associates of the CMs have been making frantic calls to members of party as well as journalists in Delhi to known the exact status of “their CMs”. One of the associate quipped, “Boss mera wala to Pucca jayega jaise kuch dino se lag raha hai”.