Himachal Pradesh | Shimla hit by fiscal landslide

Just before September arrived, with monsoon-ravaged infrastructure all around, Himachal Pradesh chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu was heard making an unusual statement. His government had written to the Centre that it wished to cut the sanctioned strength of the state’s Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre from 153 posts to 130. In fact, he may have gone down to 110, if not for resistance from within the service. The latter quibbled that Sukhu was resorting to empty rhetoric with wrong math, since he was slashing posts that were vacant anyway! But why was the CM striking a pose with his fingers on the scissors?