Priyanka Gandhi to camp in Lucknow to oversee Dec 14 rally preparations

As if to prove Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya’s comments about her waging a social media war wrong, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra (pictured) has decided to pitch camp in Lucknow to oversee preparations by the party’s Uttar Pradesh unit for the December 14 rally to take on the Narendra Modi government. The rally will be held at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi and focus on issues related to the economic downturn, unemployment, farm distress, inflation, and so on. To ensure state unit members participate in the rally in large numbers, the party will raise a dedicated volunteer force, apart from setting up a call centre to mobilise party workers.

Time for officers to move 

Madhya Pradesh is in for an administrative reshuffle. Chief Minister Kamal Nath (pictured)  might replace Principal Secretary Ashok Barnwal “by someone close to him”. Barnwal, who was in the same position under the previous government, was retained by Nath for almost a year. He is likely to be shifted to some other department. And, as was reported on Tuesday, Forest Minister Umang Singhar and Additional Chief Secretary A P Shrivastava, who is in charge of forests, are not on good terms. Shrivastava has “appraised’ the chief secretary about his discomfort in working with Singhar. According to sources, the latter might be transferred to the finance department.

Dealing with pornography

On the suggestion of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu (pictured), MPs have constituted an information group on dealing with the challenges of regulating the access of children to internet pornography. The 14-member group held its first meeting on Monday and briefed Naidu about it on Tuesday. The MPs have decided to invite representatives of various stakeholders, including government agencies, like the Computer Emergency Response Team  and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, to discuss the issue. It will also ask content publishers, social media companies like ByteDance (TikTok), WhatsApp, Google, Facebook, Sharechat, and Microsoft. The members voiced concern over the generation of online Child Sexual Abuse Materials. which is accessed by anyone on the internet.