A senior IAS officer was present at the state’s meeting with the Planning Commission in New Delhi recently without any invitation. Ministers of the Nitish government often remain in the dark about the whereabouts of bureaucrats under them.
'When we ask them to be present in a meeting or an event, the officials often tell us that they had received a call from the chief minister’s office and would have to go there. There is no way we can confirm if the officer actually went to the chief minister’s office. The chief minister’s office also refuses to tell us about the officers of our department summoned there,” said a minister. He said ministers did not have easy access to chief minister Nitish Kumar. “The officers might be having a whale of a time somewhere else on the pretext of going to the chief minister,” he added. In the past, there have been several examples of principal secretary-rank officers refusing to toe the line of their minister. “The chief minister is used as an excuse to defy us,” the minister said.
The war of words between the JD(U) and the BJP has died down but the perception that the alliance will ultimately collapse appears to prevail. The BJP workers sound weary. “We might as well have parted ways after the high drama. Laluji was correct in saying that the BJP-JD(U) alliance was like a marriage in which the divorce has not officially been filed,” said a BJP worker. The JD(U) leaders pointed out that the BJP ministers appear to be in a hurry in getting work done. “If one looks at the spate of decisions taken by the BJP ministers, one can understand that they would like to complete their task before 2014 — the next parliamentary elections,” said a JD(U) MLC, suggesting that work means making money. The state government doctors appear to be relieved after the transfer of Amarjeet Sinha from the post of principal health secretary. Sinha tried to ensure the presence of doctors in hospitals during the duty hours. The medics strongly opposed his effort to introduce biometric cards. “There were efforts in the past also to ensure doctors stayed in the hospital for eight hours a day. But all the efforts failed. The doctors know how to thwart the attempts,” said an official of the health department, stressing that the main challenge for Sinha’s successor would be to ensure his predecessor’s effort continued. Patna district magistrate (DM) Sanjay Singh spotted a person speaking Hindi with English accent at janata darbar and asked if he lived in London. The man replied that he stayed in Delhi. “Then you can continue to speak the way you are doing now,” the Patna DM joked. The man looked like a migrant labourer who had decided to return to his native place. “Several migrant labourers are returning to the state because of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and as a result we are getting to listen to Hindi spoken in various accents,” said an officer in the janata darbar.
