Candid Notes

Friday, 27 September 2024 | Gajendra Singh Negi

Raging rumour

Talk about a high profile heist to the tune of a whopping sum of Rs 50 crore in the bungalow of a retired officer of Indian Administrative Services is presently making rounds in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and New Delhi. It is being speculated that the ill-fated bungalow located in the Bhimtal area of Nainital district in Uttarakhand belonged to an IAS officer who once lorded over the Babudom of UP and is still very influential in the corridors of power in Lucknow. The buzz is that the high profile Babu refrained from registering a formal complaint with the police about the heist but the official machinery of the two States is on its toes to nab the audacious thieves.  Interestingly, amid wild speculations and name shaming in the social media, the former additional chief secretary of UP Awanish Awasthi, who was appointed by UP government as the chief advisor to CM Yogi Adityanath after his superannuation in 2022, took to the social media platform X in which he proclaimed that a smear campaign to tarnish his image is being carried out on social media and warned of a strong and decisive legal action against those involved in this business.

U -turn

A powerful bureaucrat of the Himalayan State stirred a hornet’s nest when he conceptualised and proceeded with a plan for government takeover of a portion of the playground of prestigious Saint Joseph’s Academy located in the neighborhood of the State secretariat and Police headquarters in Dehradun. The purported objective was to create a large parking space for decongesting busy Rajpur Road and nearby high security area. A powerful lobby of former Josephites and well wishers of the famed school started a campaign against the takeover move. It was alleged that some land sharks are behind the motive which is being portrayed as a traffic decongestion and parking space creation plan. The crescendo of the protest became so loud that a harried government decided to roll back the land takeover plan. The onus is now on the school management to fulfill its promise to allow the vehicles of the parents and visitors inside its sprawling campus which otherwise are parked on the roads spawning perpetual traffic jams.

Power play

The decision of the Pushkar Singh Dhami government to provide 50 per cent subsidy to the consumers using less than 100 units of electricity in a month and the households using up to 200 units in the snow covered areas  of the State has come as a major reprieve for the State unit of BJP in the Himalayan State. After the twin defeats in recent Assembly bypolls of Manglaur and Badrinath, the saffron party is now facing the twin challenge of crucial Kedarnath Assembly bypoll and elections of Urban Local Bodies in the State.  Considering the ground situation, the BJP bigwigs are expecting a tough fight from a spirited Congress party in Kedarnath by -election.  The BJP is hoping that the power subsidy plan of CM Dhami will prove to be a major weapon in its hands in the upcoming battles of Kedarnath and ULB elections.