New Delhi

May 29, 2004

Who will be the New Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes

Finance Minister P Chidambaram is faced with a peculiar problem. Two seniors in the Central Board of Direct Taxes who are in the first and second rankings, have held senior positions in Chennai. both have investigated the cases of income tax and disproportionate wealth of Jayalalitha. DMK sources want the post of Chairman of Central Board of Direct Taxes should go to a lady officer, while Chidambaram wants the Chairmanship to be awarded to a male officer. Interestingly both have not yet been brought to the Central Board of direct taxes. The lady officer is still in charge not even officiating as Chairman of the Board.

Before the parliament session begins Chidambaram intends to fill in the vacancy. A reward to lady officer for her rigourous investigation against AIADMK leader Jayalalitha.

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Misuse by Cellular Operators

Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami recently brought to the notice of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India about receiving telephone calls for canvassing votes during elections. Gopalaswami stated that the voices of the then Prime Minister and other political parties had disturbed his privacy. Gopalaswami complaint is that the private cellular providers like Air Tel, Hutch and Idea have been providing the subscribers data base to the political parties on revenue basis. No private operator has the right to sell the data base and if they want to do so, some of the subscribers would like to have reservations. A different data base should be created for such advertising and publicity. Apart from political leaders voices, the SMS and nuisance of private bank operators who want to market their car-house loans do disturb the precious time of the subscribers. Gopalaswami wants that TRAI should prevent such misuse by an order.

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Former Ministers and MPs help themselves to Government Property

Half a dozen Union Ministers of the NDA regime have taken away not only the sophisticated furnitures but also costly 'kashmere carpets' from their office chambers. The joint secretaries in charge of establishment sections have no other go except to record that some items were found missing. Very cleverly some bureaucrats have attached a paper,so that they can add more missing items as the enclosed paper does not have any signatures. These interesting gossip one could hear in the service centres of Central Public Works Department, as many MPs have even removed ceiling fans from the government houses.

In connaivance with the politicians,some engineers have given-in to the MPs, and completed the records mentioning that the motorrs and coils of the ceiling fans are under repair.