OFF THE RECORD review on some of todays headlines…

1. D.K. Jain’s name finalised as Chief Secretary.

In a closed door meeting held at ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton with few builders and some top officials of our state, the name of D.K.Jain has got the final stamp. I had reported about this name as to who will be our new CS, some months ago. Also by the way, the Nanar Refinery project which is in the news for all the wrong reasons, anyone getting hands on the names of landowners around the refinery, please don’t stop there…Spread it out to as many people. I have heard a lot of “Jain’s” are the owners of the land around Nanar refinery and it is also said they were informed some months ago to purchase the land by some “Jain” in Mantralaya… What a coincidence sir jee? The declaration of this name formally, will be just a formality now…Hard Luck- Sudhir Shrivastava,Medha Gadgil, Sunil Porwal, & so on…



2. Who is eying to be the new UD secretary in place of Kareer?

I never attend any press conferences. But yesterday it was a special one. My city’s planning for next 20 years was to be presented to the pressers and to top that, two of my most liked bureaucrats were addressing it. UD Secretary Nitin Kareer & Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta. Third one was ACS Housing-SanjayKumar, favourite of many Pune waalahs having Bentleys’s & Rolce Royce’s….At the question answer session after the press, one of my colleague (the I know everything attitude) did try to checkmate Sanjay Kumar in a technical question asked, but Nitin Kareer and Mehta were too good even for this ‘mischievous’ journo. Anyway, friends its time for you to guess–Who is the one person amongst the remaining two who is eyeing for the post of Nitin Kareer i.e. to be the future UD Secretary for Government of Maharashtra? The one who is trying does not know Kareer well, I guess. Behind the nicest nature and ever smiling face lies intention of deep honesty to serve his people and that too with a brilliant mind & clean soul..Even after having more than 40 years (My father +Moi) of Journalism experience we haven’t heard a single person saying anything negative about Kareer. For him the work can be either done or it cannot be done, then you ask the PM to call him, he will not do it if does not fit the law…he will be direct on your face to say a NO. But yes, if the work is happening and he says a YES, he is a man of his word….by the way there are no agents to be met nor the driver of his car for giving packets after the work is done. So, it might a bit difficult for the ACS ranked officer to come close to Kareer’s commitment to his job and filling in his shoes. By the way just for the sake of gossip mongers, Kareer isn’t going anywhere. The rumours of him that he was in the race to be the new MC of Mumbai, have died down. Now thats like a far fetched dream for many to oust Kareer…it’s like Paramvir Singh taking help of Kalyankar to become CP of Mumbai…far fetched right?



3. Time for GAD to think on these lines…

Time & again our country’s some or the other state goes on elections. So, a chunk of IAS officers are deputed to that particular state to be the governing officers from our state. So like when elections in Gujarat were declared a number of IAS officers went there as observers, governing officers and so on…Who will go or who will be deputed is a job GAD (General Administration Department ) to decide and they accordingly inform the concerned department and then the Election Commission office at Delhi. But there is one hitch here. GAD ends up sending field duty officers who are directly at the helm of affairs on day to day basis. They send Officers of Municipal Corporations & other departments. Now these top officers (particularly IAS) have to be present in their respective city/town everyday as in a state like Maharashtra anything can happen anytime. To top that there are numerous visitors coming up with their day to day problems every single day and then there is huge pile of paperwork these officers need to deal with. My suggestion to GAD–instead of sending the on field officers, how about allocating officers of the rank of Divisional Commissioner’s for such job. Anyways, they are the monitors of the class who are required only when things get disrupted, rest of the time just utilise them nah? Also for information, when the election commissions sends their requirements, I guess Maharashtra must be the only state who must be fulfilling all the requirements of the Commission office. None of the other states send their that number of officers as required….Why this happens GAD only with us? Why does Maharashtra have to comply with everything and anything Centre demands?

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