Power minister Piyush Goyal is believed to be one of the achievers in Modi Sarkar. But that’s no excuse for losing your cool at a meeting of state power secretaries in Delhi few weeks ago. A little bird present at the meeting recalls that although there were over 200 people in the auditorium, Goyal was upset that only six state power secretaries turned up. A livid Goyal ordered that central grants be increased for those states present at the meeting, and reduced proportionately for states which were not. That’s what they call co-operative federalism, right?
It was a public rap on the knuckles of State Bank of India by the CBI chief last week that kick-started all the action against corporate fatcat Vijay Mallya. Anil Sinha didn’t pull his punches while addressing a gathering of banking chiefs at a conference in Mumbai. He said that even though Mallya had defrauded banks of Rs 7,000 crore, no one had come forward to lodge a complaint with the CBI. SBI, the biggest loser in this case, was left red-faced, and chief Arundhati Bhattarcharya ordered the bank to move court. But the CBI chief let the cat out of the bag: banks are not complaining to the CBI despite crores of fraudulent loans. The question is why?
