MUMBAI: After a month of the Mumbai terror attacks, the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC) in a letter to the Maharashtra government has demanded that the post of the state home secretary should be reserved for a police officer instead of a bureaucrat.
The MRCC chief Kripashankar Singh said that in its demand the MRCC feels that the home secretary of the state should be an officer from the Indian Police Service (IPS) and not from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Singh, who was a former minister of home in the Maharashtra government, said that reserving the post for the IPS cadre would help in better coordination. "I have raised this issue during the winter session of the state legislature, which concluded in Nagpur on Tuesday," he said.
Singh reiterated his demand seeking "dumping the bodies" of the nine terrorists outside the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. He further said that the Rupees 127 crore allocated by the state government to beef up security should be utilized at the earliest. "We also need to increase the strength of the force so that policemen are required to work only for eight hours. This is long pending issue," he added.
Meanwhile, an unhappy Congress may replace Bollywood actor and member of Parliament, Govinda, with Shah Rukh Khan in the forthcoming parliamentary elections likely to be held in April 2009. Singh indicated this yesterday to the media and said Shah Rukh Khan would contest from the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat, which is currently held by Govinda.
Though the Congress wants Khan to join the party, the problem is the actor is too much tied up with lots of film assignments. As a matter of fact SRK, as he is popularly known, shares good relations with Congress president and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and her family. On the other hand, the Congress is not at all satisfied with the performance of Govinda.
