Babugiri

All in the Family
For some bureaucrats, the connections are all in the family. Check this out: D Subba Rao, Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, and now designated Finance Secretary (from the 1972 batch Andhra Pradesh cadre) has his sister-in-law, Renuka Viswanathan (1971 batch Karnataka cadre) as Secretary, Department of Disinvestment. Renuka's sister, Urmila, also an IAS of 1975 batch, is the wife of Subba Rao. Renuka's other sibling, Vatsala Vats is a 1973 batch Karnataka cadre IAS officer. She is posted in Bangalore as Home Secretary. Renuka's younger brother, Raghunandan, also a Karnataka IAS officer from the 1983 batch, is presently Joint Secretary, Panchayat Raj.

So, Renuka can literally coordinate within the family to finalise any draft agenda that she wants to push through to the Committee of Secretaries. Renuka's husband was Additional Director General of Police in Karnataka.
Aspiration Unfulfilled!
Once out of the hot seat in the Cabinet Secretariat, B K Chaturvedi drove to Yojana Bhawan and took over as a Member of the Planning Commission, nurturing the belief that he would continue to have as much of a say as before. He called on Deputy Chairman Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia and sought high-profile portfolios like Petroleum and Natural Gas, Transport and Infrastructure. What Ahluwalia's response was is not known, but the former Cabinet Secretary was assigned a more prosaic portfolio -- monitoring the North-East. Sources say, he is still hoping to "annex" important subjects at the year-end when there would be a shuffling of portfolios at Yojana Bhawan. The third day in the Planning Commission, Chaturvedi accompanied Union Ministers, Mani Shankar Aiyer and Jairam Ramesh, to visit Meghalaya and Assam. The two Ministers look after the North East. To cut a long story short, Chaturvedi is swotting flies as there are no pending North East files. He, however, quickly found another opportunity to get busy. He became one of the panelists on Lok Sabha TV whose viewership is best left to the imagination !! Anthony's dilemma !!

Who will be the next Defence Secretary? Anybody who gets it will get a two-year additional tenure. The Defence MinisterAnthony is quite a stickler for propriety and would not like to be seen as pushing for favourites. Among the suitors for the post are officers of the 1971 IAS batch, M S Srinivasan, Secretary, Petroleum and Natural Gas, and V Subramanian, Secretary, Non-conventional Energy, and 1972 batch G K Pillai, Commerce Secretary.

Pillai, being from the Kerala Cadre, has worked with Antony when the latter was Chief Minister. But Commerce Minister Kamalnath may not be prepared to relieve him.The choice could boild down to MS and VS. MS will be very keen to leave Petroleum as his relationship with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora can hardly be called hunky-dory. But the perception about his proximity to a powerful Mumbai-based corporate house is raising apprehensions!! The ostensible reason however will be that he is tied up with finalising gas pricing, a critical and tricky issue.

VS has everything going for him, but he also has the reputation of not maintaining confidentiality – at least that is what used to be whispered about him when he was Additional Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation. VS reportedly spent and hour with Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar last week to push his case. The latter apparently pointed to his lack of experience in Defence. Pat came VS’s answer: "I had experience in Finance. Why then didn't you consider me for the North Block?"

There are however two dark horses. One is Vijay Singh, Secertary, Surface Tansport, and son of L P Singh, ICS (retd) and brother of Vineeta Rai, former Revenue Secretary. The second is S Banerjee, Secretary, Defence Production. Watch this space for developments!