CM for few ministers in public meetings

Previous chief ministers loved ministers around them at public meetings. When Lalu Prasad was the chief minister, former minister Jai Prakash Narayan Yadav accompanied him to most of the functions. But the present chief minister, Nitish Kumar, does not have any permanent minister going around with him. In fact, he reportedly was upset when he was invited to a function with at least six ministers. The more the ministers, the more is the waiting time of the chief minister. For, he is allotted the last speaker's slot because of his stature and demand among masses,” said a JD (U) MLA, pointing out that the chief minister had on several occasions skipped the long wait by declaring that he had urgent work and spoke first. He (Nitish) likes only one minister, he said.

IAS missing

J.K. Sinha, the former district magistrate of Patna and who was working as special secretary at the CM's secretariat, suddenly went missing, triggering speculation in the bureaucratic circle. “The chief minister might have asked him to leave because of the controversy he (Sinha) triggered off,” said an official at the headquarters, recalling that Sinha had always been at the receiving end of the Opposition for posting “outsiders” in key posts. Sinha is a Tripura cadre IAS officer. According to sources, his tenure of five years' deputation is over and the Tripura government refused to extend it. “Well, Sinha was not as lucky as R.C. Prasad (an UP cadre IAS officer and a JD (U) MP in the Rajya Sabha at present). Even Prasad's tenure lapsed. But the Mayawati government was willing to extend his tenure and he later quit service and joined politics,” said the official. He wondered if the chief minister had asked the Tripura government to extend the deputation of Sinha.

Land gift

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi could not find a solution to a case in his last janata darbar. A person from Araria, Ramdev Rishidev, turned up at the darbar and told Modi that his gift of 15 decimal land to the government for opening a school in his locality had gone waste. “Some other person gifted his land to the government and now the school is being built there,” he said, before Modi giving details of how long he had to work to acquire the 15 decimal of land for the philanthropic gesture. In a state where acquisition of land for welfare projects and industries is a major problem, there appeared to be no taker for Rishidev's gesture.

 

Traffic jam stumps minister

For citizens getting stuck in traffic jams regularly, take heart from this. A couple of days ago, a senior minister who had gone on an inspection tour found himself fretting and fuming at Fatuha because of jam. “The traffic snarl not only upset my schedule but also drained me out,” he complained to a friend. Of course, he got little sympathy because masses have to face the problem in the same spot daily.