GRAPEVINE

Education Ministry’s distinction

Union Education Ministry, over the decade, has earned the rare distinction that neither the Minister nor any of its Secretaries could complete their tenure. Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, and Dharmendra Pradhan all had an abrupt end, surrounded by some of the controversies. Nonetheless, the Education Secretaries, except for Amit Khare (now Secretary to the VP of India) and Sanjay Kumar, who got embroiled in controversy due to the CBSE OSM issue, superannuated in June 2026. He, however, missed the bus for a further assignment committed at the Centre, according to grapevines. R Subramanyam was removed as Education Secretary over JNU controversy, SN Mohanty was transferred allegedly due to autonomy issues of IITs and confrontation with then Minister in this regard, Vinay Sheel Oberoi too could not finsh tenure and KK Sharma was appointed OSD Education one day before his transfer, Ashok Thakur too confronted the govt during the fag end of his career saving his scalp with the sarcasm ‘go play and golf’ and the latest to fall victim was another high profile career-bureaucrat Vineet Joshi.

My Adani vs your Adani

Industrialist Gautam Adani must be enjoying various political parties playing My Adani vs Your Adani syndrome. While Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi was blaming Adani for everything to attack PM Narendra Modi, Congress-ruled states Karnataka and Kerala are rolling out red carpet for him. While Adani was given rousing reception in Karnataka in connection with a multi-crore road project, Union Minister HD Kumaraswamy was publishing a full-page advertisement in newspapers against Adani’s project, accusing huge corruption with Shivakumar’s Congress Govt. Previous week, Kerala Govt was all out in reception to Adani for his port projects Customs Terminal inauguration project. Nontheless Congress ruled State of Himachal Pradesh and party supported JMM-led Jharkhand Govt have also projects from the baskets of Adani and the concerned CMs maintain silence not to annoy Rahul’s anti-Adani ideology.

QRTs to counter fake contents

In the age of multiple social media platforms which goes viral within seconds, the Government has asked all ministries and departments to urgently set up Quick Response Teams (QRTs) to detect fake content on social media in real time. Sources said that the QRT will be an independent boy to be headed by a Joint Secretary-level officer and the hunt is on. A recent Government communication stated that the QRTs should detect fake content related to their respective ministries and departments and post a response on their official social media handles within two hours of the origin of the fake or misleading content. Concerns were raised that rumours spread rapidly on social media and hence there is a need for quick official response.

Rahul Gandhi as Batman!

Posters calling Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi “the real-life Batman” were put up near the Congress’ Indira Bhawan headquarters and in parts of central Delhi by a party functionary. The posters has Rahul Gandhi’s picture alongside the picture of Batman. They had the captions “The Silent Guardian” and “A Watchful Protector” written on them. The other caption on the posters was “LoP Rahul Gandhi — The Real-Life Batman”. The posters come days after Rahul Gandhi, during an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Instagram, had given a witty response to the poser — Are you Batman. Rahul had answered, equally straight up, sidestepping any comparison to the caped crusader: “Let’s just say that no one has ever seen me and Batman in the same room together.” “Ask me anything,” he said in a fresh outreach to Gen Z. And they did, the questions had poured in right through the session on Instagram.