The Congress on Monday questioned the sudden removal of lC Goyal as the Union Home Secretary and directly targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his “authoritatian style of functioning and arbitrary decision-making which undermines the Cabinet form of governance.”
Former Union Minister Anand Sharma noted that in the last 15 months two Home Secretaries of the Government of India were “insulted and removed” and a Foreign Secretary was also sacked unceremoniously. Sharma alleged that removal of Goyal could be because of his seeking information on the Naga peace accord that the Centre signed with NSCN (IM).
“Government may have got upset with him because of his seeking information on the Naga accord as the Home Ministry was not aware about the development. It could have been thought as to how he could dare,” Sharma said at the AICC briefing.
He charged that the Prime Minister, from day one, has started a policy, which is “dangerous for modern India”, in which his Ministers don’t know about the secretaries their departments are going to have.
“It is not a Presidential form of governance. We can only take note of the unexpressed agony of the Ministers who come to know about their secretaries through TV and newspapers only,” he said.
Sharma rued the fact and said that his party feels “sorry” for such an important post, Home Minister Rajnath Singh comes to know about things when the file comes from “top”. “We are commenting about governance, processes and about complete centralisation of power. Many uncomfortable questions have arisen under the Modi Government,” he remarked.
He said that to run the administration smoothly, the earlier Government had taken a conscious decision to have a fixed tenure for key bureaucrats like the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary but Modi Government is “doing away with it”.