On International Yoga Day, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s friend and ally Vijayakant, the actor-turned-politician, who stole the show in Tamil Nadu. Organising a yoga camp at his party headquarters, Vijayakant was seen more giving instructions to his partymen, in his usual bossy style, than doing yoga. Sitting by his side, his wife Premalatha was seen correcting him a couple of times. He also complained of muscle pull as he tried to sit like a yogi. Better, you watch his expressions in the videos that as usual, went viral across various social media platforms. After all, he happens to be the most prominent political personality of Tamils among social media buffs here for quite sometime.
Another person who hogged the limelight for all the wrong reasons last week was a police officer. The social media went viral with the “news” that Ganesan, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime (Western range), Salem city, was campaigning for the ruling party in R. K. Nagar by-election. He was spotted campaigning at Tondiarpet area earmarked for Edappadi K. Palanisamy, Minister for State Highways and Minor Ports, hailing from Salem district. Ganesan had applied for medical leave and the appearance of his pictures along with the usual satire in social media followed by strongly worded statements from Opposition parties caused much embarrassment to the police force. As a damage control exercise, his superiors directed him to return the same evening. Since then, the police officer has been lying low and is out of bounds for media.
An innocuous incident such as release of merit list for medical counselling took a twist when officials involved became obsequious. Usually medical education officials keep their speeches to the point and leave it to the Health Minister to make elaborate and flowery speeches about the government’s achievements.
But last week, there was a role reversal. While the Minister remained silent, the Director of Medical Education began her speech by singing praises of the Chief Minister and claiming that the entire process of medical counselling had been initiated by the Chief Minister herself.
For his part, the Minister released the merit list and instead spoke at some length on how the government had managed to ensure that the city had received permission for a new medical college after 50 years.
There is hectic lobbying going on among senior officials in TNEB headquarters for the posts of directors that have fallen vacant recently.
With the Directors of Distribution and Generation wings and Managing Director for Tantransco retiring last month and the Directors of Projects and Operations retiring this month, several names are doing the rounds at the NPKKR Maligai (headquarters of Tangedco, Tantransco and TNEB).
Usually in case of a vacancy, additional charge would be given to other directors. But Chief Engineer (North) has been given additional charge as Director (Distribution) going against the convention.
(Reporting by B. Aravind Kumar, Syed Muthahar Saqaf, R. Sujatha and R. Srikanth)
