Time to brace up
Aparajita Sarangi’s reputation always travels ahead of her. No wonder the appointment of the no-nonsense bureaucrat as secretary, higher education, has set the cat among the pigeons in the department.
Not only the laidback babus, long used to their afternoon siestas, are mentally preparing themselves for a slog, but college teachers are also scurrying to clean up their act.
The representatives of at least two teachers’ associations are said to have already met her and what transpired was not just an exchange of greetings but also some serious discussion on issues plaguing colleges. The overwhelming feeling in the department is that Sarangi may take time to settle down, but once she does, she will put her house in order.
CM’s letter to PM
The campaign for the panchayat elections having drawn to an end, chief minister Naveen Patnaik is free to hone his letter-writing skills. His latest missive to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the National Counter Terrorism Centre being vested with sweeping powers without taking states into confidence is rather harsh by his standards. But neither this nor any of his past letters appear to have impressed the Opposition, which calls it an exercise in futility.
“What’s the point in writing letters when they fail to elicit any response. It seems he writes for the sake of personal pleasure. If that is so, he should refrain from making them public,” said an angry Opposition leader.
Dramatic reply
Grapevine has it that former agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy, who owns Kalinga Gana Natya, a well known jatra (mobile theatre) troupe, is busy writing a play on the much-hyped Pipili gangrape case that claimed his job.
The play, which is certain to be lapped up by the audience given the controversial theme, would be Maharathy’s answer to his critics in the wake of the incident.
For the bearded Pipili MLA, who was accused of harbouring the perpetrators of the crime at his farmhouse, the disgrace that he suffered in public in the wake of extensive media coverage of the case was more painful than the loss of ministerial berth. The play would hopefully salvage some of his lost pride.
No excuses
The thumping victory of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the panchayat polls has stunned rivals who, this time round, even lack the fig leaf of electronic voting machines (EVMs) to hide their embarrassment. When the Congress and the BJP lost to the BJD in the Umerkote Assembly bypoll in November 2011, they immediately put the blame on the EVMs alleging that they had been tampered with. However, that cannot be an excuse in the case of panchayat elections where the government relied on the manual voting system instead of the electronically operated machines. No wonder BJD second-in-command Pyari Mohan Mohapatra taunted rivals saying: “ When we won last time, they attributed it to what they called jantradesh (verdict of the machines). Wonder what they are going to say now.”
Patnaik worried
State Congress president Niranjan Patnaik is not only feeling dejected in the wake of his party’s drubbing in the panchayat polls, he is also seriously worried.
Being the third consecutive electoral defeat of the party since he took charge last year, it has provided ammunition to the dissidents who are planning to launch a campaign for his ouster.
The Congress chief, who has made more enemies than friends during his stay in the office so far, is too well aware of the lurking danger.
Party insiders confide that Patnaik is planning to mend fences with old rivals and buy peace with the more troublesome members of the youth brigade who are expected to visit Delhi soon to campaign against him.
