Devanand Konwar

Patna, Oct. 25: The man who holds Bihar’s highest office desperately wants to come down, but nobody seems to be lifting a finger to help him descend.

Governor Devanand Konwar has been virtually confined to his living room on the second floor of Raj Bhavan for the past few days because both lifts in the majestic mansion are out of order.

His knees bad, the septuagenarian governor hasn’t been coming down to meet visitors in his ground floor office.

“He also limps slightly and cannot climb up the seven flights of stairs to his living room even if he takes the pain of coming down somehow,” said a Raj Bhavan source.

Result: thanks to the elevators, “His Excellency” hasn’t been feeling particularly elevated.

Raj Bhavan public relations officer L.K. Jha said “one of the two lifts” went out of order seven days ago. “Another one also became non-functional three days ago, making the situation difficult,” the PRO told The Telegraph.

The governor is now believed to be “angry” with the officials responsible for the maintenance of the elevators.

Sources in Raj Bhavan said the governor’s office had informed the energy department, which is supposed to look after electrical appliances, after the first lift conked out.

“What has added to the governor’s anger,” said a source close to Konwar, “is that before the officials took up the complaint, the second lift too became non-functional three days ago.”

Raj Bhavan

But the officials haven’t even complied with the “missives” from the state’s highest office, the source added.

Energy department officials confirmed the “glitches” in the lifts. “We are looking into the complaints from Raj Bhavan,” a senior official said.

“But no one has turned up yet to repair the lifts,” PRO Jha said.

Although Konwar stays on the second floor, the British-era building has high ceilings. A Raj Bhavan employee said taking the stairs to the second floor virtually amounted to walking up to the fifth floor in a normal modern-day house.

To walk up to Konwar’s living room, one has to climb seven flights of stairs, each containing eight to 10 steps.

Yesterday, an elderly visitor, who had an appointment with the governor, did walk up the stairs, but returned with an earful, though the tirade wasn’t directed at him.

“The visitor somehow climbed the stairs to the governor’s living room. But Konwar was too infuriated to entertain him. The visitor returned hearing the governor shouting at cooks and caretakers,” a Raj Bhavan official said.

PRO Jha admitted that several visitors had gone back without meeting the governor as Konwar couldn’t come down to his ground floor office to meet them. “The officials concerned should be sacked immediately,” fumed a member of the governor’s staff.

Others, however, sniffed a deeper conspiracy. Konwar, after all, is not said to be on the best of terms with the Janata Dal (United)-BJP government ruling Bihar.

Some Raj Bhavan officials said the “cold relationship” between the governor and the Nitish Kumar government was one of the reasons officials responsible for repairing the lifts had so far turned a “blind eye” to the glitches.

But if energy department officials are sitting over the complaint from the governor’s office, Konwar too has been reportedly sitting over as many as six bills passed by the state legislature.

Did anyone say sit-for-sat?

Konwar has also appointed several vice-chancellors without consulting the higher education department, prompting the ruling JD(U) to lodge a complaint with the Prime Minister about the governor’s “style of functioning”.

With Diwali tomorrow, Raj Bhavan officials were resigned to at least another elevator-less day. “But the governor has wished ‘Happy Diwali’ to all citizens of the state,” Jha said.