Karnataka poll 2018: Work stalled as Karnataka officials go on poll duty

BENGALURU: The

state administration

has virtually come to a standstill in the run-up to the

May 12 assembly elections

with a majority of government officials deployed for

poll duty

.

What’s galling is that many government employees who are not on poll duty, are citing it to shoo away people who come to get their work done.

“Obviously, people cannot expect ministers to be in their office during elections... What’s disheartening is that officials not on poll duty and supposed to work overtime to make up for those on election work are taking it easy,” said YG Muralidharan, member, Central Consumer Protection Council.

Government departments are almost empty with most staff members on poll duty. Officials claimed 60%- 90% of their staff are on election duty.

3.4L govt employees on poll duty

Ujwal Kumar Ghosh, additional chief electoral officer-2 in-charge of manpower management, said the onus is on the heads of departments to ensure that day-to-day work and administration is not hampered in government offices. “Staff taking undue advantage of the situation is possible, but heads of departments must take responsibility to ensure work is not delayed,” said Ghosh.

He said the EC draws over 3.45 lakh government employees for election work and most would be deployed at 58,000 polling stations on May 12. They’re called in batches for training. They have to write an exam after the training session to prove their preparedness. If they fail, they’re retrained before another examination. Other than these employees, over 50,000 officials have been put on other duties such as monitoring the model code of conduct and poll expenditure. Many are members of flying squads and checkposts set up to check illegal transportation of money and liquor.

“While poll duty is an important task assigned to us, staff of the department are working hard to manage the routine work,” said M Mamatha, assistant controller, legal metrology department .

B P Manje Gowda, outgoing president, Karnataka State Government Employees’ Association, said 3.4 lakh employees of the 5.2 lakh government employees have been drawn for election work. “There’s deployment on this scale because polls are in a single phase. However, this cannot be an excuse for employees to skip routine duty,” he said.

H K Ramu, president of the association. said they had sent representations to the chief secretary urging to fill up the vacancies .