Kejriwal Govt cutting bureaucracy to size!

The Joint Cadre Authority (JCA) meeting held in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Thursday was unprecedented in the sense that no officer from Delhi was present due to the continuing tussle between the AAP Government and the bureaucracy. Many IPS and IAS officers whose posting to Delhi was due now will have to wait as a recalcitrant Delhi Government did not allow Chief Secretary KK Sharma to attend the meeting, according to sources. 

The trust deficit between the Arvind Kejriwal Government and the bureaucracy came out in the open on Thursday with Deputy CM Manish Sisodia writing to the MHA that he would like to represent the administration in the JCA meetings for transfer and postings of senior officials. As per the laid down rules, only Chief Secretaries of the AGMUT cadre are supposed to attend the JCA meeting to decide the transfer and postings of bureaucrats.  Furthermore, political representatives of AGMUT cadre could not have a say in the pool of both IAS and IPS officials posting since crucial subject such as law, order and land are beyond their jurisdiction. 

While the MHA rejected  the Deputy CM’s  request, the issue has once again highlighted the fact that chief secretary K K Sharma has been sidelined. Top sources told The Pioneer that neither chief secretary nor his representative attended  the JCA meeting while the MHA has already rejected Sisodia’s request to represent Delhi in the meeting. “This was the first time that there was no representation from Delhi. The Deputy Chief Minister’s move has caused some uneasiness in the MHA as they fear that it will set a dangerous precedent,” they said.

Insiders attributed Sisodia’s move to attain two objectives: First, ensuring that AAP Government’s choice of Additional Commissioner of Police in the Anti- Corruption Branch SS Yadav does not run into trouble and second, the position of Joint Commissioner of Police Mukesh Kumar Meena is not strengthened and he gets transferred.

It is also noted that the differences between the CM and Chief Secretary Sharma have widened in the recent past with the AAP Government reportedly not routing most of the important  files  through the Chief Secretary office. A large number of decisions taken in the recent past are said to have been handled either by the ministers or their respective secretaries. 

The chasm between the bureaucracy and the AAP administration was one of the key reasons for the Deputy CM to hold weekly meetings with  all the Heads of Departments.  Earlier, the weekly meeting was chaired by the Chief Secretary himself.Insiders said about 50 to 60 per cent of the files are not being routed through the office of the Chief Secretary. A close associate of the CM, however, said this was primarily being done to decentralise the day-to-day functioning of the administration. “The CM himself has said time and again that only important files be routed through his office.”