Tag: Janata Dal

After sacking of Kishor, is there a third force in the making in Bihar?

Source – business-standard.com

‘Third force’ in Bihar?

The Janata Dal (United) on Wed-nesday sacked party vice-president and election strategist Prashant Kishor (pictured) and former diplomat Pavan Varma from the primary membership of the party. It said the two had been making anti-party statements.

According to sources, Kishor is preparing in earnest for the Bihar Assembly polls, scheduled for September-October. Several senior leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) are upset with Tejashwi Yadav. Allies, including Rashtriya Loktantrik Samata Party’s Upendra Kushwaha and others, could also be amenable to join a “third force” in Bihar politics that Kishor hopes to shape.

It could comprise RJD rebels, these smaller parties and the Left parties. Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Kanhaiya Kumar is set to start his whirlwind tour of Bihar in the coming days. With RJD chief Lalu Prasad unwell and in jail, the question now is whether the Congress will sever its alliance with Tejashwi-led RJD and lead such an alliance against Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) and Bharatiya Janata Party alliance.

Better interpretation

The Rajya Sabha currently has an interesting mix of interpreters within its ranks. It has expanded its pool of interpreters after Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu instructed officials to ensure that the House’s “simultaneous interpretation service” in all the 22 scheduled languages of the country operates smoothly.

A total of 32 consultant-interpreters have been hired for seven languages including Dogri, Konkani and Sindhi. Instead of recruiting full-time interpreters, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat has experimented with hiring consultants to be engaged on a need to basis. Rajya Sabha Secretary General Desh Dipak Verma said this was a cost-effective way of meeting the simultaneous interpretation need.

Congress’ Shatru!

The bonhomie between maverick Congress leader Shatrughan Sinha and Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav continues to cause much consternation among Congressmen in Uttar Pradesh. Recently, Shatrughan Sinha and former Union minister Yashwant Sinha had shared the dais with Yadav at the SP headquarters in Lucknow.

The actor-turned-politician had quit Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and joined Congress in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He contested from the Patna Sahib seat but lost, while his wife Poonam Sinha tasted defeat as the SP nominee from the Lucknow parliamentary seat.

Congress’ Lucknow Lok Sabha candidate Acharya Pramod Krishnam took to Twitter to hit out at Sinha over his alleged disloyalty towards the Congress. Other state Congress leaders also expressed dismay over the “conduct” of Sinha and demanded that such people should be shown the door.

No ‘regular’ chemist to check quality of potable water supplied to Bihar homes

Source: hindustantimes.com

The Bihar government does not have any regular chemist to test quality of water being supplied to homes under “har ghar nal ka jal”, one of the seven flagship schemes of the state government.

In 2004, the state government had appointed as many as 29 chemists to test quality of supply water in various districts through the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). But they still continue to work on temporary basis and thereby being denied suitable pay scales and other benefits.

As per rules, the state should have at least one chemist in each of its 38 districts and 75 sub-divisions.

The matter came to the light when Janata Dal (United) member Sanjeev Shyam Singh raised the matter in the legislative council during the question hour and sought the government’s reply on whether it was considering regularising their services and had any plan to equip the water testing labs across the state with qualified technical persons and infrastructure.

The issue assumes considerable significance as the public health and engineering department (PHED) had set up as many as 93 water testing labs in the districts and sub-divisions to ensure supply of safe water in arsenic and fluoride infested areas. Consumption of arsenic and fluoride laced water causes many diseases, including cancer.

In his reply, PHED minister Binod Narayan Jha said the government was looking to regularise the service of chemists appointed through the BPSC. He said chemists could not be appointed as they were appointed as temporary staff under the planned allocation. Later, their posts were transferred under the non-plan section.

Countering the reply, the JD(U) member said it was ironical that the government was treating technical staff appointed by BPSC as casual and denying them appropriate wages under a design by vested interests in the department.

Singh also alleged that the PHED could not develop any reliable set of manpower to ensure supply of tested water despite the Central government’s protocol, stipulated a few years ago, to raise a separate cadre for water testing staff. “As quality testing staff are on temporary basis, engineers, who are dealing in supply, generally held sway in the decision making,” Singh pointed out, adding that the rules framed for better management of human resources in 2016 also contained many discrepancies.

Intervening in the matter, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi the government would look into the issues and correct it as BPSC was not the body to appoint temporary staff. “There might be some mistakes in the past that led to such discrepancies,” he said.