The Hindu : Govt. compiling list of `achievements'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 08, 2004

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National

Govt. compiling list of `achievements'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JAN. 7. It is now more or less official. While a formal decision is yet to be taken on whether the Lok Sabha elections should be advanced, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry has been asked to put together the ``unique initiatives and landmark achievements'' of ``Five Years of NDA Government'' in anticipation of an early poll.

In fact, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) — the media unit through which the I&B Ministry executes such demands of any incumbent government — has practically completed the exercise with officers having been told in no uncertain terms that they should submit the ``unique initiatives and landmark achievements'' of their respective ministries by January 6. Though all too familiar with such an exercise, this is the third time in less than a year that PIB officials were asked to collate ``achievements/milestones'' of their ministries — this time round they were given a deadline that was not only ``urgent'' but also ``time-bound.''

Last year, similar exercises were carried out twice; first to mark the completion of five years of continuous NDA governance under the leadership of the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and then in October to celebrate four years of the current dispensation. This apart, the Union Minister of State for I&B, Ravi Shankar Prasad, asked ministries in November itself to provide PIB State-wise information on Central support for various projects and the ``resultant achievements'' of the NDA Government in all States. In fact, he wrote personally to all ministers asking for such information for ``dissemination.''

Running parallel to the bureaucratic exercise are the meetings being convened by the Bharatiya Janata Party president, Venkaiah Naidu, with ministers who are being asked to prepare ``talking points'' for the campaign. In fact, this morning, he met four BJP ministers — Satyanarain Jaitya, Shatrughan Sinha, Bandaru Dattatreya and Shripad Yesso Naik — besides the External Affairs Minister, Yashwant Sinha, who briefed him about his Islamabad visit. The ministers were also asked to review the progress of projects under way and those in the pipeline, and told to hasten the process of implementing or clearing them as the case may be.

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