The seven-month tenure of the outgoing District Magistrate of Dehradun Chandresh Kumar was riddled with challenges. He remained in the thick of controversies on issues the media was focused on. In most such cases, he bungled. His approach was cavalier, according to the observers who watched him from close quarters. This was because he chose to remain ensconced in the bureaucratic cocoon, insulated from the heat and dust of the real world, said one of them. It was not that he was always wrong, yet his approach was supercilious and worse, often infantile, alleged another.
Take for instance, his spat with the Mussoorie MlA Ganesh Joshi. Accompanied by a band of followers, the BJP leader reached DM’s camp office to register a complaint regarding alleged irregularities in counting of votes during August last year’s Panchayat election. Kumar asked the MlA to ask his supporters to leave the camp failing which he threatened to foist a case. He asked the media persons who were there to cover the incident to leave the campus. Touched to the quick, the saffron MlA wondered whether Kumar was a mere DM or the CM.
In another instance, Kumar postponed the students’ union election- 2014 by two days without taking the students’ union election officer into confidence. As per lyndgoh Committee recommendation, all power related to student body election rests with the colleges’ election officers. When queried, he told The Pioneer nonchalantly that had he violated lyndgoh Committee recommendation the college principal should have ignored his order.
In a recent incident, Kumar defended the sub-inspector who had thrashed a tourist in public during Mussoorie Winterline Carnival. Questions were raised as to why the cop had gone for that without booking him under appropriate section of IPC. But unfazed by criticism, Kumar stuck to his guns, throwing his weight behind the errant cop. Mercifully, the SI was later transferred to police-line.
Kumar dismissed the media when the latter pointed out that the visitors faced traffic congestions during last year’s winterline festival. Kumar, however, received kudos for introducing staffing pattern regarding administrative officers being sent on deputation in the remote areas. The step was meant to ensure that the government welfare schemes are executed uniformly across the district. But his resolve slackened and he capitulated supinely in the wake of the Collectorate employees baring fangs. Consequently, the order was withdrawn to the glee of the sulking staff and to the woe of the common people of the state.