A year on, Congress still searching for candidate to head MP's state unit

A year after forming the government in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress is still struggling to find a candidate to head its state unit. Chief Minister Kamal Nath, who is also the state unit head, has said over and over again that he would like to give up the second post, but with many power centres in the Madhya Pradesh Congress, the party leadership decided to maintain the status quo. Now, as the government looks safe, the party has begun the search for a state head all over again. The front-runners for the post are Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ajay Singh (son of former chief minister Arjun Singh), Umang Singhar (the tribal face of the party), and Bala Bachchan (state home minister and a confidant of Nath).

Poor construction

Heads might roll in the Uttar Pradesh government after Prime Minister Narendra Modi tripped on the steps of Atal Ghat on the banks of the Ganga in Kanpur last week. The Centre had spent Rs 10 crore on the construction of the ghat, but the December 14 incident brought to light the poor quality of construction of the local ghats under the flagship Namami Gange project. Even a cursory glimpse would show the stone-engraved steps are uneven. After the video that captured the unfortunate incident involving the PM was widely shared on social media platforms, it emerged that scores of people had also met with a similar fate. While the episode has left the authorities in Uttar Pradesh red-faced, an inquiry is underway to fix responsibility.

Fight within 

The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) will hold in New Delhi on Thursday a national convention of the employees of central public sector undertakings against the Centre’s policy on privatisation, disinvestment, strategic sales of PSUs, mergers in banking and insurance, and the corporatisation of railways and defence production units. The BMS has said it will demand that the government initiates wage negotiations, clears salaries and wages, revives and diversifies sick PSUs, and revises the pension for retired BSNL and MTNL employees. The BMS is part of the big tent of the Sangh, to which the Bharatiya Janata Party belongs.