When his complaints against a senior IAS officer to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath did not work, UP's Power Minister Shrikant Sharma took to twitter to show his annoyance against Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited Chairman Arvind Kumar, exposing the delay in implementation of the power projects.
The tactics worked and the said officer was transferred out of the power sector on Monday night. Agriculture Production Commissioner Alok Sinha has been given the additional charge of UPPCL.
This was probably the first time when a senior minister took to social media to express his annoyance against a bureaucrat working under him.
"What can he do? The minister had lodged complaints to the chief minister a number of times but his pleas were ignored. So, he took to twitter to air his grievances," a close confidant of the minister told this reporter on Tuesday morning.
Sharma was not available for his comments.
In a series of tweets in January, the power minister raised questions over just 14 per cent registration in schemes that are aimed to give relief to industrialists, commercial and domestic power users.
He also questioned the lack of accountability of the managing directors of the various discoms and asked why the UPPCL chairman was not taking action against them.
The situation reached a point of no return when on January 25 the minister took to twitter to question why the system of downloading of bills in urban and rural areas was not complete. He also questioned why the UPPCL was at a loss of over Rs 90,000 crore.
People close to the power minister said that Sharma found irregularities in purchase of smart power meters, lack of transparency in the working of billing agencies and lack of communication between the UPPCL and the government.
It all started when Arvind Kumar refused to sign an agreement between the minister and the Power Employees Union on October 5, 2020 after the employees had threatened to go on strike.
The matter reached the chief minister's office following which Kumar signed the papers on October 6.
"If a senior minister of the stature of Shrikant Sharma is forced to air his grievances on twitter, this shows what kind of transparency there is in the Yogi cabinet.
"Sharma was earlier the national spokesman of the Bharatiya Janata Party and has roots in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Despite that, the chief minister was not willing to listen to him. This proves there is no transparency in the working of the UP government," senior Congress leader Amarnath Agarwal said.