By Dilip Cherian
Is this really the end of the road for the Delhi Gymkhana Club as we have known it? Maybe. And if it is, nobody in Lutyens’ Delhi can honestly say the signs weren’t there.
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The Centre’s eviction notice to the Delhi Gymkhana Club, the babus’ favourite watering hole, from its 27-acre spread in the heart of the capital is not an overnight act of muscle-flexing. The groundwork has been building for years. What began with questions over finances, questionable memberships, and internal functioning gradually escalated into a full-scale government intervention. Once the bureaucracy enters a club’s books, history shows it rarely leaves empty-handed.
For decades, the Gymkhana represented a certain Delhi ecosystem: retired generals, senior babus, politicians, fixers, diplomats and the occasional industrialist, all sharing drinks, gossip and influence under one colonial roof. Membership was less about sport and more about arrival. In Delhi, the waiting list itself was a status symbol.
But the political mood has changed. Old entitlement no longer carries the protection it once did. A club sitting on prime public land next to the Prime Minister’s residence, paying what many see as throwaway rent, was always going to become difficult to defend in today’s climate.
The government has invoked “public purpose” and defence-related needs. Whether that is the full story or simply the most convenient legal route is something the courts may eventually examine. But politically, the Centre probably believes it can win this fight easily in the court of public opinion.
That is what has rattled the Lutyens’ circuit the most. Not just the possibility of losing a prestigious club, but the realisation that proximity to power is no longer a permanent insurance policy.
And that raises the question quietly doing the rounds in Delhi’s drawing rooms and club bars: if Gymkhana can be touched, who exactly is untouchable anymore?
Could it be the Delhi Golf Club? High-handicap golfers on Dr Zakir Hussain Marg should note that the state’s gaze has already begun to shift.
Centre’s new Manipur doctrine
The Centre’s decision to move Mukesh Singh from Ladakh to Manipur is not a routine IPS reshuffle. It is a blunt signal that Delhi no longer trusts Manipur’s crisis to be handled through conventional political management.
After nearly three years of ethnic violence, displacement and institutional drift, the state has become less a governance challenge and more a national-security concern. Singh’s appointment reflects that shift in thinking. With a background in counterinsurgency and security operations, he is being sent not merely as a police chief, but as Delhi’s troubleshooter. That is the real message behind the move.
It also highlights the Centre’s growing reliance on AGMUT cadre officers in politically sensitive regions. Officers perceived to be closer to Delhi than to local power structures are increasingly preferred where the Centre wants tighter control and quicker execution.
Critics will see this as creeping centralisation. They are not entirely wrong. Every time Delhi imports a “trusted” officer into a troubled state, it quietly signals diminishing faith in local institutions and political leadership.
But Manipur is no longer a normal law-and-order situation. The conflict has hardened ethnic fault lines so deeply that even the police force has faced allegations of partisan behaviour. In that atmosphere, Delhi appears convinced that only an outsider can restore some operational credibility.
The signal from Delhi is unmistakable: Manipur is now being handled as a security priority, not merely a troubled state.
Himachal’s CS call was about trust, not tenure
The suspense around Himachal Pradesh’s next Chief Secretary has ended rather abruptly and, in classic babu style, at the very last minute. With barely five days left before retirement, Sanjay Gupta has now been formally regularised as Chief Secretary by the Sukhu government, ending weeks of speculation over succession and possible extensions.
What looked like an open contest has instead turned into a message. The government has chosen continuity over experimentation and familiarity over a fresh power equation. In politically unsettled times, chief ministers often prefer officers they already understand rather than risk a new bureaucratic centre of gravity emerging at the top.
That makes this appointment less about administrative convention and more about political comfort. Himachal’s finances remain strained, the Congress government continues to navigate internal pressures, and stability inside the secretariat has clearly been prioritized over a prolonged succession battle.
The interesting part is that the chatter around possible contenders, including officers with longer residual service, has effectively been shut down for now. In many states, governments increasingly look for Chief Secretaries who can stay longer and avoid annual reshuffles. Himachal has gone the other way, choosing immediate control and predictability even if the tenure is short.
There is another aspect, too. Gupta’s continuation comes even as questions around earlier allegations and pending legal scrutiny continue to hover in the background. That makes the decision politically bolder than a routine administrative order.
In today’s babu politics, the Chief Secretary’s chair is no longer just about seniority but also about trust. Himachal has made that calculation explicit.
