Candid Notes

Congress’s CM?

Former CM and probably only mass leader left in Uttarakhand Congress now Harish Rawat is looking determined to settle the issue of leadership of the party in the Himalayan state. In recent days the astute leader has not only increased his activity on ground by extensively travelling the length and breadth of the state but has also become increasingly candid in his social media posts. By demanding that the party should declare its CM candidate for the assembly election due in early 2022 and declaring that he would stand behind any leader the party projects for the coveted post in the state where the power has changed hands in every five years, Rawat has asserted himself like never before in his chequered political career. It is clear that he is playing the game of political up brinkmanshipf with the party which has made up its mind to move ahead with a collective leadership plan under which the contentious issue of leadership is solved after the elections. A seasoned politician Rawat knows it too well that though the Congress party was mauled by the BJP in the elections of 2017 which were fought under his command the grand old party don’t have any other leader than him which it can project as face for CM in the state.

Paper Tigers

The forest department of Uttarakhand was at receiving end of jokes recently when a Male tiger which was radio collared and was to be transferred in the western part of Rajaji National Park from the Corbett Tiger Reserve under a grandiose plan to repopulate Rajaji made an escaping act. The much hyped event from which the department planned to boost its image went haywire when the big cat escaped from its enclosure from where it was to be released in the wild. Amusingly enough the officials receiving signals from the radio collar of the animal were under the impression for two full days that the animal is still inside the small enclosure. Later they found that the Tiger had wriggled out of the collar and had vanished into the wild wilderness. In a sort of saving grace for the red-faced officials of the forest department, one of the camera traps of the park was able to locate the Tiger. The fiasco however reflected the state of affairs in the cash rich department which most of the time remains obscure from public gaze.  

Disconnected Babus

In what can be termed as fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic enforced restrictions, many Babus of the Himalayan state have developed a habit of not answering the phone calls directed to them. The public representatives are increasingly getting disgusted at this annoying tendency of the officials. The recent and highly deplorable episode in which a BJP MLA used choicest expletives on an official had its genesis in this tendency of the official concerned.  In another such incident, the only woman minister of the state took the extreme step of registering a missing complaint with police when a director of a department ignored her calls. The scribes in search of quotes and official confirmation of news items are also bearing the brunt of this tendency of the Babudom. Though the Babus are duty bound to pick the phone calls made on their phones and while some of them do pick up the calls but a lot many prefer to keep the phone ringing as it probably disturbs the leisurely pace of their work. 

Friday, 15 January 2021 | Gajendra Singh Negi