Patna, Aug. 5: The Bihar government’s recent move to seek details of the outcome of visits by principal secretaries and secretaries to places outside and within the state has left the top bureaucracy fuming.

The chief secretary’s office issued a letter to the senior bureaucrats in June to ensure that they did not forget to furnish the details of outcome of their tours from July 2011 till the date of providing the particulars. A reminder was also sent to the officers.

“It is ridiculous. We are being treated like schoolboys. I had to postpone some of my important departmental work for recollecting details of tours during the past year and submit the report to the chief secretary,” one of the departmental secretaries said.

He questioned the logic behind the move, as the secretaries and the principal secretaries visit places outside Bihar only after taking the chief secretary’s permission. “The reason for the tour is explained while seeking permission from the chief secretary. I fail to understand the logic behind submitting the details once again,” the official added.

The principal secretary of a key department said: “The entire exercise is demeaning because, as departmental heads, we know our work. As far as tours outside the state are concerned, the chief secretary’s office can get the details by checking its records. The reasons for seeking his permission of such tours are explained well in advance. As far as the outcome of tours undertaken within the state, I fail to understand the logic of providing the outcome of the tours. How would the government run properly if it doesn’t trust departmental heads for undertaking such tours and ask them to provide such details? This only consumes time and doesn’t serve any purpose.”

Describing the state government’s move as “a demoralising one”, another principal secretary said: “This move is not going to pay. Rather, it would demoralise the officials who work sincerely. Such a measure is an indirect way of questioning the integrity of the officers who have served for long and have proved their worth.”

He added: “When I was the collector of one of the Maoist-hit districts in the late 1980s I had received a very strange query from the office of the then chief secretary. I had sent a formal request to the state headquarters seeking deployment of additional security forces in the district. The office of the chief secretary asked me to explain how many days I had spent in rural areas and what was the basis on which I was seeking such a deployment. I had become silent after the query.”

Though the compilation of the records does add to the workload of these senior officers, none of them has ignored the directive and submitted the report, sources said. Justifying the government’s recent move, chief secretary Navin Kumar told The Telegraph: “The officers had been given a certain task for undertaking tours. The report would help us in assessing whether those tasks were done or not.”

The reports would not remain confined to the chief secretary’s office but would be submitted to the chief minister. “The content of the report would be one of the parameters while assessing the officers’ performance,” Kumar said. Former chief secretary V.S. Dubey supported the idea of seeking such reports from senior officers. “There is nothing wrong in seeking reports because many officers take such trips very lightly. Now that the government has sought report about the outcome of such trips, no one would be able to commit such a mistake,” he said.

Dubey suggested that instead of making such an exercise as a one-time affair, the government should put in place a system for ensuring compulsory submission of such reports immediately after any officer undertakes tours.