The blame game between Mysuru Zilla Panchayat president Pushpa Amaranath and Deputy Commissioner C. Shikha comes to the fore ever so often. Ms. Pushpa had complained some time ago that Ms. Shikha had not furnished details about tanks in the district, of how many were fenced and how many encroached. Ms. Pushpa claimed that she had written to the DC seeking information. Ms. Shikha replied saying steps had been initiated to fence all tanks and evict encroachers. And she sarcastically congratulated the president for her concern for tanks. The DC had recently served a notice to Ms. Pushpa seeking explanation for not surrendering the “official car” given to her by the government from May 10 to June 7 during enforcement of poll conduct during gram panchayat elections. Ms. Shikha cautioned Ms. Pushpa that if she failed to give an explanation within 24 hours, the DC may be compelled to submit a report to the State Election Commission for violating poll conduct. The president in her reply said she handed over the official car to the district administration on May 9. She mentioned the registration number of the car to confirm this.
Health officials
on night duty
Top officials of the Health Department had to literally spend a sleepless night on Thursday to prepare themselves to face opposition BJP members, who staged a dharna the next day demanding higher wages for contract nurses. The officials, who discussed the issue with Health Minister U.T. Khader at his residence, were up the whole night from post-Iftar to pre-Sehri, an official source said. It was only after the “night duty” on Thursday that officials were able to cull out documents and equip themselves with facts and figures. “We finally realized that the issue was only with auxiliary nurse midwives who were appointed under the erstwhile Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) programme. Almost all of them except 28 from Udupi district opted to come under the umbrella of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) when it was introduced in 2006.” Of the 28, only 16 are still under the erstwhile RCH, which is actually non-existent. The rest either resigned or moved to NRHM. So, the issue is actually with 16 nurses, he said. The source said he was feeling sleepy the whole of next day.
VTU in limelight for the wrong reasons
Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) continues to be in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. The Justice K.N. Keshavanarayana committee quickly moved to look into the host of alleged financial and other irregularities. One serious allegation was about a nil balance shown under corpus fund – from a huge amount of over Rs. 541 crore which was generated sine the establishment of the university till 2012-13, even as Vice-Chancellor H. Maheshappa has been repeatedly denying allegations. Governor and Chancellor of the State Universities Vajubhai R. Vala replaced the one-man committee earlier headed by former HC Judge Ajit J. Gunjal. Mr. Keshavanarayana was appointed a fortnight ago and visited VTU campus in Belagavi last week to look into the alleged irregularities. While returning to Bengaluru, he has asked university authorities to appear before him with relevant files, as told by highly placed sources in the Raj Bhavan. Interestingly, the VTU authorities left no stone unturned to evade inquiry and even challenged the Governor’s order through an appeal in the High Court at Dharwad, which the court dismissed and paved way for the inquiry.
Khader, MLC
cross swords
Member of the Legislative Council Y.A. Narayanaswamy recently described Health and Family Welfare Minister and in-charge of Kolar district U.T. Khader as a “flag-hoisting Minister”. His insinuation was that Mr. Khader attends Republic Day and Independence Day celebrations and hoists flags without fail but is not interested in the development of the district. Mr. Khader reacted and called Mr. Narayanaswamy a legislator who only receives allowances. Returning the compliment, he said the MLC did not care for the development of the district as he did not attend progress review meetings. “Not even once has Mr. Narayanaswamy discussed the problems of the district with me,” Mr. Khader retorted. There were more echoes as Kolar District Congress Committee President M.L. Anilkumar jumped to defend the Minister. “Mr. Khader is recognised as the most active member of the Siddaramaiah Cabinet,” he said.
H.S. Narasimha Kumar,
Afshan Yasmeen, Vijaykumar Patil, and Vishwa Kundapura
