Amid signs of bickering in Himachal bureaucracy, the State Government on Thursday transferred additional Chief Secretary Partho Mitra, a 1978 batch IAS officer from food and civil supplies department to less important cooperation department along with four other IAS officers.
Mitra had on Wednesday, while holding a charge of food and civil supplies department issued fresh tenders for supply of Sugar through Public Distribution System (PDS) in the State, despite the cabinet approval for allotment of the tender for supply of sugar to sole bidder, who qualified the samples as well as technical bid.
After the cabinet approval on July 5, Mitra moved a fresh proposal for inviting fresh tenders on July 6, which was turned down by food and civil supplies minister GS Balli, who till late was enjoying off and on relationship with chief minister Virbhadra Singh.
Despite proposal being turned down by Balli, Mitra one of the senior most bureaucrats of the state, moved to the chief minister to get the file for fresh tenders cleared. Interestingly when Balli was not in town and without keeping him in loop, chief minister gave his nod for issuance of fresh tenders.
This over enthusiastic act of Mitra, did not go down well with Balli who was in Delhi and took up the matter with chief minister and central leadership of Congress, clearly showing annoyance with the functioning of the secretary and repeated interference in his ministry.
To pacify Balli, on Thursday Mitra was transferred from food and civil supplies department to cooperation department of state government and was replaced by 1989 batch IAS officer principal secretary Sanjay Murthy. However Mitra will continue holding the charge of additional chief secretary (home and vigilance).
Over 16.31 lakh families are to get sugar for past two months from PDS shops across the state and after centre partially decontrolled sugar, Himachal Pradesh had invited bids to deliver sugar through PDS systems.
Most of Sugar mills kept away from the tender process and four firms had placed their tenders out of which samples of two firms failed while one firm failed on technical grounds leaving a Delhi based firm as sole contender in the fray.
Balli took up the matter in the cabinet due to the delay in the entire process and delay in supply of sugar for past two months and managed to get clearance from council of
ministers.
However, according to sources just after the cabinet meet got over, a powerfull lobby got active and chief minister office had to give orders to top officials of food and civil supplies department, to initiate a proposal for fresh bidding.