The D.V. Sadananda Gowda-led Government in Karnataka faces a peculiar situation. While ministers from Sadananda Gowda’s cabinet keep resigning almost every month, the chief minister is not being allowed to expand his ministry by the party High Command. A total of nine ministers have so far resigned because of one allegation or the other, while a majority of those who left behind owe their allegiance to the former chief minister, B.S Yeddyurappa. The Congress leader Siddaramaiah, who also recently resigned from his post of opposition leader in the assembly, is demanding dissolution of the House and an election thereafter. It looks like the people of Karnataka are also resigned to their fate of being governed by a rudderless government.

No dousing the rumours

The embers in Mantralaya, the Secretariat building of Maharashtra Government, have cooled. But not the conspiracy theories behind the fire The BJP National President, Nitin Gadkari, has demanded a probe by a sitting or a retired judge of the Supreme Court into the fire, which has destroyed about 30 per cent of the building. Gadkari said the credibility of the government was at stake, as rumours were doing the rounds that important files pertaining to various scandals had been destroyed.

Govern-mental training

Despite a serious job profile, Ashok Chawla, Chairman, Competition Commission of India, has a lighter side. The Gujarat cadre IAS officer of the 1973 batch, who was recently in the Western State, enthralled the audience by narrating tales of his early training days there. He said when he, along with six other colleagues, landed in Ahmedabad and reported at the Gujarat Institute of Training in Administration, they found out that the institute was located in a complex called the “New Mental Hospital.”

Since all the fresh IAS officers were put up at the Vishram Grah near Delhi Darwaza, then known as the “Old Civil Hospital,” a good part of the professional training was spent in “going from the Civil Hospital to the Mental Hospital and back every evening,” he said, evoking peals of laughter from the audience.

Short-changed!

Coin shortage is not new, but the offer of 8 per cent for every Rs 100 in coins in Coimbatore, be it in Re 1, Rs 2 or Rs 5 denomination, has caught people by surprise. Food and restaurant chain Hotel Anandhaas is offering 8 per cent and has even placed a board announcing this in all its seven city outlets. However, the response is lukewarm.

“We source the short change (coin) from temples in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We pay 8 per cent to get it, so we decided to offer the same rate here,” a hotel staff member said. But one rupee coin shortage is so acute that when the hotel sought change for Rs 20,000 last week, it got all of it in 50 paise!

Tailpiece

A tweet taking a dig at the Finance Minister’s retro tax proposal in this year’s Budget vis-a-vis his Presidential candidature:

“Pranab Mukherjee has been chosen President with 'retrospective effect'! Appointment valid from 1960!”

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