TN Minister for IT and Digital Services Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, at the Nasscom people summit 2025, in Chennai (file photo) | Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSHTamil Nadu IT Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan was quite vocal at a Nasscom event when he spoke about urban planning issues. He said that urban planning has not been proper over the last few decades.Giving an example of his home town Madurai, the Minister said, “in my own house in Madurai, when I was probably 10 years old, there may have been 10 water bodies around my house within 2 km radius. All have been encroached.”And guess who are the encroachers. “ Income Tax office, Kendriya Vidyalaya, City of Madurai Corporation Office, District Court, High Court and Tamil Sangam,” he said. So, they were encroached by the government — from the city to the Union. But this is not unique to Madurai or Tamil Nadu.“The faster you have urbanised the more these problems are going to haunt you and we are the most urbanised State,” he said.Caught in the crossfireSenior civil servants have become the latest football in a game of political one-upmanship in Karnataka. Recently, some crude remarks were made by a senior BJP leader against the state chief secretary and earlier the DC of Kalburagi. Egged on by the ruling Congress, the IAS Officers Association has demanded an apology, even as the state police have filed cases.However, BJP leaders point out that the same association was silent when Chief Minister Siddaramaiah publicly ‘abused’ a DC and raised his hand at an SP, leading to his resignation. The majority of the civil servants, however, feel that increasingly it is becoming difficult to function in a non-partisan manner due to ‘undue’ political pressure from all parties. The iron frame of India seems to have corroded by politics.Capital concernsNotwithstanding the mandate won by the NDA Alliance in the elections last year in Andhra Pradesh and resumption of construction works on the new capital at Amaravati, concerns on the fate of the upcoming capital are still strong.There is a nagging doubt among a good section of officials in the State government — what if YSR Congress Party led by Jagan Mohan Reddy comes back to power in 2029? Surprisingly, many agree that there is a possibility of relocating it as he did after coming to power in 2019. The question will be answered after four years.Iconic stationsPraveen Khandelwal, Member of Parliament from Chandni Chowk, has written to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw requesting that New Delhi Railway Station be renamed as “Atal Behari Vajpayee Railway Station”. He termed it as a significant and emotional step toward immortalising the memory of Vajpayee.He has also proposed that Delhi Junction (Old Delhi Railway Station) be renamed as “Maharaja Agrasen Railway Station”.He argued that just as major railway stations like Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in Mumbai and Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna Station in Bengaluru have been named after historical icons, similarly, a station located at the heart of the national capital must be dedicated to a national icon like Vajpayee. Our BureausPublished on July 6, 2025