Jharkhand Assembly Speaker, Dinesh Oraon on Thursday lost his cool on absence of bureaucrats from the House.
As the second half of the Assembly proceedings began after lunch hour, the gallery where senior administrative officials sit witnessed empty chairs. Oroan on seeing the empty chairs during call attention motion lost his temper. He said, “There is no place for such officers in State who are not coming to Assembly regularly. It appears that some officers feel ashamed to come to the House.”
The Speaker further said, “I had observed that there are many officers who had not visited the Assembly for even a single day. This is not for the first time that officers are absent from the House.”
As per parliamentary process, it is mandatory for administrative officials to sit inside the House to assist concerned ministers in proceedings. Ruling party chief whip and BJP MLA, Radha Krishna Kishore said, “The role of administrative officials is to assist concerned ministers in proceedings. It also gains importance when a minister from concerned department has to answer questions of lawmakers.
For instance if Rural Development Minister or Human Resource Development Minister has to answer questions in the House, it is mandatory that senior officers from concerned departments are require to present in the house so as to assist the ministers.”
Meanwhile, during the question hour, the issue of power theft in East Singhbhum was raised by JVM (P) MLA, Pardeep Yadav.
The lawmaker raised the query that due to Government’s negligence and involvement of energy department officials, six companies from January 1, 2015 to 31 December 2018 are involve in power theft due to which the energy department has incurred a loss of Rs 400 crore. Replying to query made by Yadav, CP Singh the minister in-charge of energy department said, “The Government will lodge FIR against six power companies and 18 energy department officials for their alleged involvement in power theft.”
Singh also said, “The State Government has constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe power thefts and financial irregularities that cause huge losses to the state exchequer.”
However, Yadav kept on demanding to lodge FIR against concerned officials within 24 hours.
Yadav said, “In November 2017, the State Government constituted the SIT, but till now no action has been taken against power department officials for their alleged role in power theft. Ironically, KK Verma the engineer who was behind the power theft has been promoted in the rank of executive director.”
However, Singh said, “The SIT has came to know that the power theft is not of Rs 400 crore. Due to difference in meter reading of consumer and company there is loss of Rs 7.96 crore, but the Government is committed to take action in this connection.”