Where are all the worthies?

North Block corridors may be abuzz with top cop M B Kaushal’s possible elevation to the office of Delhi’s lieutenant governor — indeed, no one who knows anything about this IPS officer is willing to believe that he can retire into oblivion — but more interestingly, the government has still not found a suitable successor to the man who demitted the office of secretary, internal security, on December 31.
For the time being at least, his charge has been split among home secretary Kamal Pande, who will oversee cadre control of police forces, and special secretary Kashmir affairs, Ashok Bhandari, who’ll be in charge of internal security matters. Incidentally, Kaushal remains the first IPS officer ever to be given personal rank of secretary in the ministry of home affairs.

Sizeable offer!
Whichever way you look at it, the initial public offering of Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd will be remembered, if nothing else, for its sheer size. Without speculating upon the outcome of the 100 per cent book-building IPO which is yet to hit the market, take a peek at what’s on offer. At between Rs 1,200 and 1,800 crore-worth of equity instruments up for the taking, it’s certainly among the biggies of its kind in recent years.

But this isn’t the only size to reckon with. The draft prospectus for the IPO runs into, hold your breath, all of 482 pages in fine print. Now, prudence warrants investors to carefully read the prospectus before deciding on whether they want to subscribe to the issue or not. In this case, however, only the truly keen will choose to pore over such a voluminous document. Others may well invest without undertaking the desired level of scrutiny, and yet others may opt to give the scrip a miss altogether.

Maybe the Securities and Exchange Board of India ought to set an upper limit on the number of pages in offer documents, in the name of investor protection, of course!