The most newsy chapters of the book detail the times when, as the incumbent coal secretary in 2014, he had to oversee the fresh auction of the coal blocks which had been cancelled by the Supreme Court during the UPA regime. The clearance came a full hour after the scheduled press conference was to begin and Swarup admits that every second of that one hour weighed heavily on him. He adds this punchline: “But he (Javadekar) wanted to take the PMO into confidence (a culture that had evolved over a period of time)…the PMO backed my stand and asked me to go ahead to brief the media later in the afternoon but only after I had received the PM’s clearance through the PMO…” He suggested removal of Anita Karwal to contain the fallout…”Īt this stage, Swarup stepped in and offered to address the infuriated media as Secretary. The media was now hounding him as well and he was avoiding them. He describes the media attack against the CBSE chairperson, Anita Karwal, as “vicious, malicious and personal” and says that when he met the education minister, Prakash Javadekar, “he appeared jittery. The victimisation of bureaucrats and the resultant policy paralysis is an underlying theme of the book - a March 2018 episode Swarup writes about after the leak of the CBSE board exam question papers is an illustrative example.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |