Punjab CM ropes in Manmohan Singh to chalk out economic road map ahead

Expert help

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has roped in former prime minister Manmohan Singh to advise his government on the economic road map ahead. A committee headed by technocrat Montek Singh Ahluwalia has been set up for this. The Punjab chief minister said he had written to Manmohan Singh “to guide us, along with the group of experts”, including economists M Govind Rao, Rathin Roy, Ashok Gulati, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh; former Microsoft India chief Ravi Venkatesan; former Union agriculture secretary T Nanda Kumar; Vardhman group Chairman S P Oswal; ITC Chairman Sanjeev Puri; Trident group’s Rajinder Gupta, and Nestle India’s Suresh Narayanan.

Model failure

First Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, then Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav (pictured). Agra Mayor Naveen Jain’s April 21 letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, requesting him to take measures to improve health care facilities in the city to deal with coronavirus, has become a political hot potato. Yadav on Monday urged the state government to “wake up” to the situation in Agra, which is grappling with rapidly spiralling cases of coronavirus, and cited the mayor’s letter. “According to the mayor, the much-touted Agra model of the CM has failed and will make Agra the next Wuhan (in China where the virus reportedly originated).” A day earlier, the same letter was cited in a tweet by Congress general secretary Vadra who had said transparency and testing were the key to containing the virus.

Damaging letter

Even as the Adityanath government is pulling out all the stops to contain the spread of coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh, a letter purportedly written by state Director General of Medical Education (DGME) K K Gupta, advising state medical colleges to avoid using the “sub-standard” personal protection equipment kits supplied by UP Medical Supply Corporation, has left the dispensation red-faced. The advisory was in response to complaints received by the DGME from a few medical institutions, which questioned the quality of these kits. This raised questions about the procurement process followed by the corporation and hinted at possible corruption. Now the state home department has instituted an inquiry by the Special Task Force of the UP Police to find out how the DGME’s internal letter was “purposely” leaked to the media.