Rural development minister Nitish Mihsra (right) speaks to the secretary to chief minister Atish Chandra (left) during the janata durbar at 1 Aney Marg on Monday. Special secretary to chief minister secretariat Sanjay Kumar Singh looks on. Picture by Deepak Kumar

When the cat is away, the mice will play, so what if it is the chief minister’s janata durbar?

It happened on Monday, when Jitan Ram Manjhi took a 30-minute break from his weekly engagement to pay homage to MLC Indra Kumar who had passed away.

As soon as Manjhi left his chair around 12.20pm, senior bureaucrats, too, left theirs and began moving from one chair to another. Some were even seen chatting over the intercom Manjhi uses to contact officers.

The durbar had stopped functioning for the period but those whom Manjhi had already directed to officials of the department concerned were on the move, application in hand.

Bijendra Kumar (40) of Hasanpur block in Samastipur district had come complaining about unbuilt toilets in his village. Manjhi had referred him to panchayati raj department principal secretary Shashi Shekhar Sharma. But when Bijendra reached Sharma, the latter was sitting on his desk and not the chair. “Look at him. I don’t think he is serious about our problem. I better wait for the chief minister to return. Only then would the official listen to me,” said Bijendra. However, he gave up after 15 minutes and left.

Unaware that he had disappointed a petitioner, Sharma headed towards Deepak Kumar, principal secretary to the chief minister, to tell him about a jogging track recently laid at the chief minister’s residence. The two then went to inspect it. Fifteen minutes later they returned smiling. Then Deepak sounded Atish Chandra, secretary to the chief minister. “I just walked on the jogging track. It’s really good. You should see it,” he was saying. Just then Sharma joined them. “Yes sir. It is really good. Let’s go check it again,” he said. But they realised Manjhi could return any moment and dropped the idea.

Elsewhere, a group of principal secretaries were discussing Patna Municipal Corporation commissioner Kuldip Narayan’s case in the high court.

Planning and development secretary Pankaj Kumar left his chair when he got a call from his senior colleague on the intercom. Five minutes later he was talking to Deepak Kumar near Manjhi’s chair. The chirpy mood remained till 12.50pm, when Manjhi returned. Then, all bureaucrats returned to their places to listen to petitioners’ woes.