Polls loom, last-minute largesse is Govt mantra

With just days left for the Lok Sabha elections to be declared — and the model code of conduct to take effect — the government is set to make key appointments and push through populist programmes, including six new Indian Institutes of Management, reports Chetan Chauhan.See graphics

Updated on: Mar 1, 2009, 01:30:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With just days left for the Lok Sabha elections to be declared — and the model code of conduct to take effect — the government is set to make key appointments and push through populist programmes, including six new Indian Institutes of Management.

The cabinet is next week likely to discuss programmes — such as the Rs 10,000-crore Integrated Child Development Scheme that aims to meet the Common Minimum Programme commitment of protecting child rights.

The cabinet is also expected to clear the IIMs at a cost of Rs 1,114 crore.

Proposals for setting up 374 model colleges (cost: Rs 3,000 crore) and 3,500 model schools (cost: Rs 5,500 crore) are also expected to go through.

Government officials, who did not want to be named, said that among the 60 proposals listed for the cabinet are the Rs 900-crore Panchayat Van Yojana, the Rs 25,349-crore Sawaran Jayanti Gramin Rozgar Yojana and the Rs 3,254-crore National Population Register programme.

The cabinet and its panels cleared more than 70 proposals in the past week — a record of sorts. The code of conduct does not prevent the government from making key appointments, but sources said a replacement for Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta, who retires on March 31, is expected soon. A new election commissioner is also likely to be named — Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami retires on April 20.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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