Mamata makes waves

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is keen to distance herself from the working style of her predecessor Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Whether or not her stint in Delhi as a Union minister influenced this decision, it seems that didi is keen to replicate the Prime Minister’s Office model in Writers’ Building. Ms Banerjee’s chief minister

office (CMO), which is being touted as the “super CMO”, will be, locals insist, staffed with favoured babus who will work directly under her. While Mr Bhattacharjee’s CMO had seven to eight officials, Ms Banerjee’s “super CMO” has double the number of officials. Considering that the chief minister has retained important portfolios, including home, land reforms, agriculture, health and family welfare, obviously much of her government’s actions will stem from her own office. Clearly this is more than the ritualistic churn that occurs when a new government takes over. Expect many more changes in the weeks ahead.

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All pay, no work
Thanks to a Right to Information (RTI) inquiry, it has now emerged that last year the Haryana government paid several lakhs in salaries to 17 bureaucrats without delegating any work to them for over a year. The officials include seven Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers and 10 state service babus. As can be expected, the government is now in hush-up mode, claiming ignorance of the issue. According to the details revealed in the inquiry, the government continued to pay these babus without giving them a posting. One IAS officer, Wazir Singh Goyat, sat back for over four months without a posting, while others were kept idle for a month or two. An inquiry has been ordered into the “unintentional errors” though obtaining its findings may require another RTI application!

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Cop out
By the home ministry’s own reckoning, there is a shortage of 1,327 Indian Police Service (IPS) officers in the country. Now it seems a plan to recruit more IPS officials through a limited examination has already hit a roadblock in the form of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) which has become the main clearing house and blame recipient for all policies and proposals. The plan had been formulated by former IPS officer Kamal Kumar and is an offshoot of the measures announced to beef up internal security after the Mumbai terror attacks. The ministry proposes recruiting 80 IPS officers annually from the state service and Central paramilitary services over the next seven years.
Interestingly, the opposition to the plan stems not from the PMO at all but from the influence of IPS officers themselves who wouldn’t like to be on par with the state service cops. Still, home minister P. Chidambaram’s babus are hopeful.