What people say about us -

Your web site is the one which I always like to see everytime. Very authenticated news and very firm also. I pray god that you should success in getting all the right information in the right time from the right person.

I S Iyer

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS WEBSITE TO SALE YOUR PRODUCT

ADVERTISE ON-WHISPERSINTHECORRIDORS.COM

For Advertisement, mail us-sureshmehrotra@yahoo.com

Will it be between Amitabh and Rahul ?

Vidhan Sabha elections are round the corner in Uttar Pradesh and a fierce political battle is likely to take place between Amitabh Bacchan and Rahul Gandhi. Samajwadi Party is believed to have persuaded Amitabh Bacchan to actively campaign for the party. Rahul Gandhi will be star campaigner for the Congress Party.

45,1976 batch IAS officers empanelled

Latest information says that 45 IAS officers belonging to 1976 batch have been empanelled to the rank of Additional Secretary in the Government of India.

PM clears 1986 batch IAS file

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is believed to have cleared the empanelment file of 1986 batch IAS officers to the rank of Joint Secretary in the Government of India.

S K Sinha to be Secretary Programme Implementation !

S K Sinha is being tipped to be the new Secretary Statistics and Programme Implementation in the Government of India. He would succeed 1971 batch TamilNadu cadre IAS officer Dr R C Panda who is taking over as Secretary Heavy Industries.

12 IAS officials of 1972 batch yet to be secretaries

As many as 12 IAS officials of 1972 batch are yet to be made full fledged secretaries. Half of 1972 batch officials are still working as Special secretaries in the GoI. They are Mssrs J P Singh, Gopal Pillai, A K Singh, Yashwant Bhave, Pradeep Kumar, Naresh Dayal and Chandra Pal. Three Chief Secretaries Mssrs Subhash Pani (Orissa), M Ramachandran (Uttaranchal) and C Phonsog (J & K ) are also joining the GoI. R P Agrawal (AP) and Uma Pillai and N A Viswanathan (UP) are also awaiting posting.

Manu Shrivastava appointed Director Petroleum

Former PS to Union Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Manu Shrivastava, has been appointed Director in the Ministry of Petroleum. He is 1991 batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre.
( We said this on July 31 )

Amitabh Jain to join GoI

Amitabh Jain is joining the Government of India as Joint DGFT in the Ministry of Commerce. He is 1989 batch IAS officer of Chhattisgarh cadre.

Singh to be IT Ombudsman in Delhi

R R Singh is likely to be appointed Income-Tax Ombudsman in Delhi. He is 1969 batch IRS officer.

Parimal Rai is back to Delhi

Administrator of Lakshdeep, Parimal Rai, is back to Delhi.1985 batch UT cadre IAS officer, Rai, is being appointed Additional Commissioner Municipal Corporation Delhi (MCD).

Parida is back to Delhi Government

Additional Commissioner MCD, Ashok Kumar Parida, is back to the Delhi Government. 1986 batch UT cadre IAS officer is awaiting posting.

Post redesignated in Forest Survey of India

The post of Director, Forest Survey of India, under the Ministry of Environment, has been redesignated as Director General, Forest Survey of India. It is in the rank of Addl PCCF/ Addl Secretay to the GOI and current held by Dr D.Pandey IFS (AGMU:1975).

Not only Sudhir Kumar, Ashwani Lohani also

Two senior officers, presently linked with the efficient Indian Railways are making waves. Sudhir Kumar IAS, OSD to Minister of Railways is being credited with the turnaround of the Indian Railways while Ashwani Lohani IRSME, presently on deputation to Madhya Pradesh Government as MD(Tourism) is credited with the dramatic turnaround of Madhya Pradesh Tourism and also ITDC in his earlier avatar as CMD of ITDC.

Raju to be SP CBI in Jabalpur

Raju has been, on promotion, appointed SP CBI in Jabalpur. He would replace Saurabh Tripathi.

IAS changes in Uttar Pradesh

Yogesh Kumar will now be Principal Secretary Ambedkar Village Development. Akhilesh Kumar Baranwal has been appointed Registrar Meerut University.Arun Singh has been made Special Secretary Home Guards.Chandra Prakash will be Special Secretary Nibandhan.

Dr Adarsh Kishore is new ED IMF

Secretary Finance Dr Adarsh Kishore will be new Ambassador and Executive Director of the International Monitory Fund (IMF).1969 batch Rajasthan cadre IAS officer Dr Kishore would succeed 1969 batch UT cadre IAS officer B P Mishra.

Dr Subbarao to be Secretary Expenditure !

Topper of 1972 batch Dr D Subbarao is likely to be appointed Secretary Expenditure in the Government of India.He is Andhra Pradesh cadre IAS officer.

Jha to be Secretary Finance !

Secretary DEA, Ashok Kumar Jha, is likely to succeed Dr Adarsh Kishore as Secretary Finance. He is 1969 batch IAS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre.Earlier the name of Jha was in circulation for the post of ED IMF.

Will M L Sharma be Police Commissioner Delhi ?

Grapevine has it that Special Director CBI, M L Sharma, is being appointed Police Commissioner Delhi. Will 1972 batch Rajasthan cadre IPS officer Sharma succeed K K Paul ?.

Foreign Secretary to get extension

Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, is all set to get one-year extension beyond September when he

FORUM

As a matter of principle across the world bureaucrats are generalists at large. This has its own advantage ,as the officer will not have any stake in decision making. This is always a problem with generalists. The complaint of this nature may be an isolated case. So, it will be more rational to press for participatory decision making rather than very dismantling of IAS from decision making. There should not be any doubt in accepting the fact that IAS is cream de lux cream???.

Career Bureaucrat

Aaj Ki Aawaz

Laloo is going to deliver lectures at IIMs….. yes he can lecture on goonism,
And on Political opportunism!!!

Laloo is a Master in the negative aspects of Politics!!! Imagine the IIMs are calling a man who is facing serious criminal charges to lecture students!!! And the reason he's being called is also a total fallacy….. because Railway's turnaround is not Made By Laloo….. but despite Laloo!!!!

Jagat has been suspended….. but he's cited a technical flaw,
And he continues to caw!!!!

The Rajasthan Congress Committee suspended him but Jagat ' Mogambo' says that he will only accept a suspension Notice from AICC…… as if he has any choice in this matter!!!! Father and son are 'persona non grata' in Congress!!!! Father and son are holding a Farmers Rally…… crowd hirers are on the job…….. they are appeasing their egos with their own money……. of course there's nothing wrong in this !!!!!

Barnala Junior has landed himself in a soup,
Sorry but now on themselves the Barnalas have got poop!!!

Sorry to sound crude but Barnala Junior's case reminds one of the adage ' dill aaya gadhi pe toh parri kya cheez hai'!!!!!! The first question that comes to mind is that why was he taking the services of a female masseur??? They say the woman is 55 years and as per reports looks to be 65 years!!!! Various explanations are being given….. some say that maybe Barnala Junior has a 'kabaadi' mindset… some say that to do something like this they would have to be out of their minds with booze or drugs…… they couldn't be more true!!! 99.9% because of Barnala Senior's clout Barnala Junior will go scot-free….. but this will not be the case where their reputation is concerned!!! Why does Barnala Senior wear a brace around his neck….. that's because his son a pain in the neck?????

Miracle at Mahim…….seems someone dumped a lot of Colas in the sea,
Or now there is sugar in Mumbai's pee!!!

But then don't blame people for their reaction…… after what Mumbai has been going through, Mumbaikars took this as divine intervention….. a signal from Numero Uno that He was aware of their plight!!! People drank the contaminated sea water …… faith pales everything else!!!! Many theories are being given for the sweetness in the sea water….for some there is a logical answer and for some its just faith!!! And people are being warned not to drink contaminated water….. seems the Government forgets that our systems are used to much higher level of pollutants!!! Like they say Faith is believing when logic says no!!!!

Big Bluffmaster is bluffing again,
Says the goggles cost him only Rs. 4………..does he think we are insane???

A man who is known not to buy anything that does not have a designer tag says that he bought the goggles at Ulhasnagar for Rupees Four!!!! The real one is Made in USA…….and the one he is trying to make us believe is also Made in USA …. USA meaning Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association!!! Either he takes us to be stupid or he is stupid to think he can get past us!!!! Mr. Designer Big Bluffmaster would not be caught dead with a pair of Rupees Four goggles!!!

Narayan Murthy has retired at the age of sixty……. he could have easily continued ,
But when it comes to our Politicians to politics for their lifetime they remain glued!!!

Narayan Murthy has set an example!!! Shouldn't there be a retirement age for our Politicians…. why should we have to bear them for their entire life spans????? And just because the oldies don't retire the younger lot do not get a chance to come forward!!! The world over the average age of Politicians is falling but India is still one of the Countries where the age is the highest!!!! Shouldn't there be a debate on this???? Out with the old and in with the new!!!!

Bharat Kumar

aaj_ki_aawaz@rediffmail.com

WHISPERS .... CORPORATE WORLD

Did Banerjee write a letter to Petroleum Secretary ?

Did GAIL CMD, Prashanto Banerjee, write a confidential letter to Petroleum Secretary M S Srinivasan ?.Why Banerjee sahib is annoyed with the Ministry ?.

Pillai gets three months extension

CMD of the National Textile Corporation, K R Pillai, has been granted three months extension in his tenure.

Khanna to be Director (Commercial) SAIL

Director (Technical) SAIL, Khanna, is being appointed acting Director (Commercial) of the Company.

Basu is Chairman of Peerless

Former Chairman of the State Bank of India, Dipankar Basu, has taken over as new Chairman of the Peerless General Finance and Investment Company. He has succeeded D N Ghosh also a former Chairman of the SBI.

Philip is Chairman of KTDC

Cheriyan Philip has been appointed chairman of the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation (KTDC),

Verma is CMD of Uttaranchal Energy Corporation

B M Verma has taken over as new CMD of the Uttaranchal Energy Corporation.

Low, low last minute fares from Indian

Spot Fares now from 22 cities
Flying by Indian has got more exciting. Never before low fares are now available for last minute travel from as many as 22 cities.
Spot Fares, introduced from 1st Aug. 2006 on flights out of the metros - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore - have now been extended to flights departing from 16 more cities. These cities are Ahmedabad, Kochi, Bhubaneshwar, Lucknow, Nagpur, Madurai, Guwahati, Chandigarh, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Patna, Jaipur, Goa, Visakhapatnam, Agartala, and Bhopal.
Available on a "first come, first served" basis a few hours before the scheduled departure of a flight, these fares are available on flights that have unutilized capacity till a few hours before departure. Passengers can buy the tickets through travel agents, through the 24 X 7 toll free number 1800 180 1407, on-line or even at the airport. A boon indeed for those making last minute plans ! These fares are available till 30th Sept.2006.

THE TELEGRAPH WRITES

Voicing the whispers
Suresh Mehrotra is focused on bringing what goes on inside the country’s corridors of power to the world outside, says Smita Tripathi
FACE OF THE WEEK - Suresh Mehrotra

Three guesses as to what most IAS officers do on reaching office every morning? Order a cup of tea? Bury their noses in a newspaper? Heck, maybe even do some work and ask for the list of appointments for the day?

Oh no, they crank up their computers and log on to www.whispersinthecorridors. com, a website, which has taken the country’s bureaucracy by storm. Who is going to be the next cabinet secretary? Who has moved up the ladder? Who has been kicked off it? Have transfer orders been issued? And who is returning to their cadre? Basically just about all the inner goings on in the corridors of power find its way to this website.

So who’s the mole spilling all the bureaucratic beans? Some speculate that he must be a bureaucrat while others suspect he’s a low-level functionary in the personnel ministry. But they are all wrong. Meet Suresh Mehrotra, a doctorate in history and a journalist by profession who runs the whispersinthe corridors website from a small room in his house in Bhopal — with just one computer. Mehrotra has informers in every department and even senior bureaucrats leak to him. But ask him to reveal their names and he’ll grin and repeat the old mantra: “A journalist never reveals his sources.”

No surprises there! In fact, Mehrotra’s sources are placed so deep within the system that hardly any information on the country’s “Iron Frame” passes him by. Consider this: a few months ago Mehrotra got a call at the crack of dawn with earthshaking — from a bureaucratic point of view — news. The cabinet secretary had been given a two-year extension.

Mehrotra uploaded the information on his website immediately. It was only later in the evening that the government announced the decision and it became the top story on every news channel. However, by this time most bureaucrats across the country were hotly debating the last minute change, thanks to Mehrotra’s website.

Says Mehrotra, “People expect me to know everything. I have senior IAS officers calling me to check whether their name is on a particular list or not.” It goes without saying that he doesn’t mind the attention. In fact he basks in it. “People often refer to me as Mr India (referring to Anil Kapoor’s role in a film of the same name), since I’m only heard and not seen,” he laughs.

Whispersin thecorridor.com started humbly enough in March 2001, with an initial investment of around Rs 50,000. It received only two hits on Day One. Today, it has more than 2.6 million visitors and is read both by bureaucrats in India, and also those attached to Indian embassies abroad. In fact, the site enjoys such credibility that bureaucrats often quote it.

Mehrotra has an anecdote about a senior officer who was hoping to be transferred to a new department. Whispersinthecorridor carried an item that he was about to be transferred, so the officer went to his boss asking to be relieved of his job. His ingenious argument? — ‘if the website said it, it must be true’. He got his orders the very next day.

Says Mehrotra, “Sometimes I know things before the officers themselves.” He goes on to talk about a secretary level officer who the website said was going to be moved to a different ministry. The officer’s son-in-law called him up from the US to ask if it was true. The officer, not a regular visitor of the whispersinthecorridor site, had no clue but two days later, he was moved.

Just how does Mehrotra get all this sensitive information? “It’s a give-and-take relationship. Some information I part with, and some they give me,” he says referring to his bureaucrat buddies. On an average, Mehrotra sends out between 25 to 30 mails a day and makes around 50 calls to various people sitting not only in Delhi but also in other state secretariats.

And how did it all start? “It was my fascination with the bureaucracy and the way the government worked. I was never much interested in the political side of things. It was the bureaucrats who attracted me,” says Mehrotra.

So in the mid-1980’s, Mehrotra, then the bureau chief of the Free Press Journal in Bhopal started a weekly column called Whispers in the Corridors. Of course, the column only covered the activities of the officers of the Madhya Pradesh government. “It was a huge success and I realised that there were a lot of people who were interested in knowing what was happening at the seat of power,” he explains.

In 1992, Mehrotra moved to Delhi for a year. “I spent most of my time in Delhi meeting bureaucrats. Today most of them are my close friends,” he says. From 1997 to 2000, Mehrotra was the editor of National Mail and then went on to edit the Hindi daily, Nayee Duniya.

However at these organisations, he didn’t get much chance to pursue his passion for the bureaucracy. So in 2001, he set up the website. “I thought it was time for me to do something on my own. The website was just an idea,” says Mehrotra who initially had to face a lot of flak from his bureaucrat friends when he called them up asking for information to put on his site.

Cut to the present and it’s an entirely different story. “Now people often call me up and give me information, even without my asking for it. In fact, sometimes they try to plant stories about others. I need to be cautious and crosscheck such information with my sources,” says Mehrotra who as a rule tries to stay away from controversies. “I concentrate only on the comings and goings rather than on issues of corruption. Investigative journalism is for newspapers. I only give information,” he declares.

Running the website costs Mehrotra around Rs 50,000 a month thanks to the server fees and the telephone bills. He has also recruited one person who uploads the site daily at around 11 am. Apart from that, it’s a completely home-run operation.

For the first couple of years Mehrotra wasn’t making any money, but now he says he is breaking even. The site gets advertisements from the Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh governments. “Most advertising is through contacts. I don’t undertake any marketing,” he says. But now, more and more people are approaching him for advertising. Recently the IAS Wives Association has started advertising on the website for a new housing complex that they are building.

So what’s the future like for whispersinthecorridors. com? Like all dot.com entrepreneurs, Mehrotra hopes that some day the site will be big enough for a company to make him an offer he just can’t refuse. Till then, Mehrotra continues to do what he loves — give voice to all those whispers floating around in the corridors of power.

Photograph by Jagan Negi