Usually, the Secretaries of various departments explain the nature of the projects when the Chief Minister launches them through video conferencing at Fort St. George. Last week, when sports facilities were being inaugurated, the Youth Welfare and Sports Development Department Secretary Hemant Kumar Sinha was not there. He had been put under compulsory wait.
School Education Secretary had taken additional charge of the department. Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu member secretary Shambhu Kallolikar is also under compulsory wait.
Over the week, the grapevine in the corridors of power is that both of them had failed to inform the Chief Minister’s Office about the high-profile Indian Super League (ISL) 2015 inauguration at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor stadium in which Rajinikanth, Sachin Tendulkar, Amitabh Bachan participated.
There is also a story doing the rounds in the State police headquarters: failure to inform the CMO on the matter was one of the reasons for shifting Commissioner of Police S. George to the Prisons Department.
The reason for nomination of R. Balasubramanian to the search committee to select the next Vice Chancellor of the University of Madras has aroused interest.
This is the second time that Prof. Balasubramainan, who retired from the Department of Political Science and Public Administration and is now director of Faculty of Science and Humanities, SRM University, has been selected as a member of the panel.
With this, he is on the search committee of three universities. He is already the convener of the committee constituted by Thiruvalluvar University, Vellore and is the Syndicate-elected member in the Tamil Nadu Teachers Education University. Apart from his vast academic experience, he is close to Higher Education Minister P. Palaniappan is what academic circles say.
Statements of Gokulraj released through ‘Whatsapp’ in DSP Vishnupriya suicide case in Namakkal district created sensation for quite sometime in the State.
Probably, taking a cue from that, a head constable of Madurai city police with officials of the Intelligence Section released telephonic conversation through social media app.
In the abruptly-curtailed conversation, he cautions the police personnel in the Intelligence Section that their conversation was being recorded by him. “You should know that our conversation would go up to the DGP,” he warns an officer.
In this rather incoherent conversation, he says that the city police personnel should be made to work. When the officer asks him to come in person to the office of Commissioner of Police and give his complaint in writing, he hangs up the phone.
City police claim that the head constable was mentally disturbed for sometime and was on medical leave. “We called him many a time to come to our office to discuss the issue but he refuses. We don’t know why he released the audio to the journalists,” an officer said.
The ‘people connect’ programmes of leaders of various political parties have evoked good response in Salem district. The DMDK leader Vijayakant has already completed his first phase of the Makkalukkaga Makkal Pani programme with a public meeting in the rural Mecheri town.
The TMC leader G. K. Vasan has already completed two rounds of his Makkalai Nokki campaign in different Assembly constituencies in Salem district. Now all eyes are on Namakku Naame Vidiyal Meetpu Payanam undertaken by the DMK treasurer M. K. Stalin. In the third phase of his much publicised programme beginning October end, he will be in Salem. The DMK local leadership underwent some embarrassing moments in the recent past with groupism among party leaders and as such Stalin’s visit to Salem district is eagerly awaited.
(Reporting by B. Aravind Kumar, R. Sujatha, S. Sundar and Syed Muthahar Saqaf)
