LUCKNOW: The UP government’s repeated directives to officials asking them to always pick up phone calls of public representatives, including MPs and MLAs, as per necessary protocol, have once again turned out to be a case of ‘talking to a brick wall’.
The fact came to light recently when the Chief Secretary R K Tewari sent a stern missive to all additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries of various departments and the director general of police. The communique, dated November 11, also marked to all divisional commissioners and DMs, categorically mentions that officials in some districts neither pick the calls of public representatives vis-à-vis public welfare related works nor do they call back.
The development comes barely two months after a parliamentary monitoring committee headed by UP assembly speaker Hriday Narayan Dixit pressed for strict compliance of protocols due towards the public representatives as per the orders issued by the state government.
Officials said the committee got several complaints about officials not following the parliamentary protocols besides being callous in responding to correspondence from the elected representatives. The chief secretary’s communique further points out that in case of being unavailable at the time of call, officials will call back’ soon after coming to know about the lawmaker’s phone call.
All the officials in the districts should ‘save’ the phone numbers of the respective MPs/MLAs in their phones and in office records. The timing of the missive is being seen as the earnestness of the BJP to ensure public welfare work and development projects are not affected ahead of the UP assembly elections due in the next few months.
CM has himself many times asked officials to take suggestions and feedback from MPs/MLAs while implementing various welfare schemes.
During a recent region-wise meeting of BJP, party MLAs told the CM that officials are ‘unresponsive’ and do not pay heed to their suggestions. The government had sent out a similar communique on March 23 stating that officials are ‘making excuse’ of not having phone numbers of public representatives 'saved’ in their phones.
