The Union Territory finally got a new Chief Secretary in Manoj Kumar Parida who took charge Friday last, almost two months after his predecessor was transferred to Delhi.
In official circles here, Mr. Parida was deemed to have stepped into his role a day before — on Thursday — when he moved into the Puducherry Government Guest House in Delhi.
Before, Mr. Parida drove down to the Chief Secretariat to sign on the dotted line, he did something that virtually everyone posted to this former French enclave does — pay a visit to the Manakula Vinayakar temple.
Arrangements were made at the temple for a special darshan for the new Chief Secretary who came to the temple accompanied by the District Collector S. Sundaravadivelu and Information Director N. Udayakumar.
Another blessing awaited Mr. Parida, who hails from Odisha, when he stepped out of the sanctum sanctorum — a blessing from temple elephant Lakshmi.
“Come over to the Secretariat”, Mr. Parida told journalists waiting to hear his first impressions of Puducherry and his priorities in governance. However imposing his office in Delhi may have been — he was serving as Joint Secretary in the Department of Consumer Affairs — Mr. Parida seemed to like his new office which offers a window view to the Bay of Bengal.
After a brief interaction with scribes, Mr. Parida paid a visit to Chief Minister N. Rangasamy in the evening.
As a media colleague quipped it is standard procedure for dignitaries coming to the city to “first pay a visit to the Samy and then Rangasamy.”
Caught unawares
Sometimes, press conferences can provide cues to the strong points and not-so-strong side of politicians.
Last week, BJP’s local unit president M. Visweswaran held a press conference to explain his recent meeting with party president Amit Shah and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
During the press conference, Mr.Visweswaran claimed that his party was having 10.50-crore members and stood as the largest party in the world. But, when reporters asked about the members in the Puducherry unit, he was caught unawares. Mr. Visweswaran said he could not give exact figure but estimated that it could be between 80,000 and one lakh.
He also said there was nothing wrong for his party seeking a Rajya Sabha seat from the ruling AINRC as the BJP had extended support to the AINRC candidate in Lok Sabha polls.
Mr. Visweswaran added that then AINRC became part of the National Democratic Alliance and hence, in return, the AINRC can reciprocate by allocating the Rajya Sabha seat to the BJP.
No ‘Munnabhai’ at Jipmer
When reporters voiced concerns about the possibility of impersonation and fraudulent practices at the entrance exam for admission to Jipmer at a press conference at the institute recently, the management responded by saying there needs to be no fear of a ‘Munnabhai’ at Jipmer !
Mahadevan Subramanian, Dean Academic, Jipmer, was referring to the 2003 Hindi film Munnai Bhai M.B.B.S , where the lead character played by Sanjay Dutt gets into medical college by getting someone else to write the entrance exam for him. With precautions like taking biometric data, photographs, handwriting samples and installing mobile phone jammers, a ‘Munnabhai’ will indeed find it tough to get into the premier medical institute.
Reporting by M. Dinesh Varma, R. Sivaraman, Annie Philip
