Bureaucrats to boycott government till CM apologises

NEW DELHI: A crisis in governance is looming large over the capital as the bureaucratic brass has declared that it would “only maintain formal written communication with the political executive” till chief minister Arvind Kejriwal apologised.
This essentially means a boycott of meetings and all verbal communication with the CM and his cabinet. With meetings being a critical component of day-to-day governance, the move signals approaching trouble.
Earlier in the day, IAS, DANICS and DASS associations had released a statement to say that the attack on chief secretary Anshu Prakash amounted to a “functional crisis and breakdown of governance”. They urged the LG and the Centre to take expeditious action against the “perpetrators of the unfortunate incident”.

Even as AAP denied the allegation, the bureaucrats first met LG and then home minister Rajnath Singh. “The appalling and shocking physical assault meted out to the head of the administration of Delhi, in the form of blows on the head, amounting to threat to life and physical safety, is deplorable. This incident is the culmination of a series of incidents of officers being subjected to verbal abuse and intimidation by political authorities from time to time,” the statement read.
The officers said these incidents tend to impair the effective functioning of the bureaucracy. This incident, they claimed, “clearly appears to be pre-planned, pre-meditated and absolutely without any provocation on the part of the CS”.
“Delhi government officers strongly condemn the false, fabricated and malicious misinformation campaign to cover up the incident of assault on CS, wherein it is being spread that the meeting was called to discuss the issue of ration cards for citizens of Delhi. If that was the case, why was the food and supplies minister and secretary not there in the meeting?” the statement read.
Central IAS Association also came forward to condemn the incident. “We stand by our colleagues in Delhi and demand immediate arrest of the perpetrators of such a shameful act,” a statement from the association read.
Earlier in December 2016, IAS and DANICS officers had passed a resolution expressing anguish over the humiliation officers were being subjected to by the political executive. Deputy CM Manish Sisodia had then hit out at the officers’ associations, alleging that they were doing “politics”.
Before that, on the last day of 2015, and on the eve of the odd-even scheme, the CM had faced a strong protest by the bureaucrats with most of the 150-odd DANICS officers resorting to “mass leave”. The protest was against the suspension of two special secretaries of the home department. Later, MHA had nullfied the suspensions.
Kejriwal had then called the bureaucracy the “B-team of BJP”.