Bangalore: CM's order to babus: 'Pull up socks, get ready to deliver'
From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
Bangalore, May 27: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday asked the State’s bureaucracy to deliver services to the people and warned the heads of various departments and senior IAS officers that they will be held responsible for any laxity.
“I want the bureaucracy to pull up their socks and set right the faultlines in the administration,” he said addressing a conference of deputy commissioners of districts, chief executive officers of zilla panchayats and principal secretaries to various departments in Bangalore.
The conference was held for the first time after Siddaramaiah assumed office as the Chief Minister and several Cabinet Ministers attended the meeting.
Siddaramaiah, who is known to be a hard task master and no-nonsense administrator with the rare distinction of presenting seven state budgets as finance minister in the past, minced no words in his speech to the top IAS babus.
''The general perception is that the administration has collapsed in the previous BJP rule,” he said and setting out the task to the heads of the various departments and other heads of administration in the districts.
Cautioning the bureaucrats, he said: ''I want the officials to make a drastic change in the administration in the next six months or else be prepared to face strict action.”
Giving a piece of his mind to the civil servants, Siddaramaiah made it clear they will be held responsible for any delay in the delivery of various pro-people welfare schemes of the Government, including distribution of 30 kgs of rice at one rupee per kg from next month.
''Delay in the implementation of the Government schemes would not be tolerated,” Siddaramaiah declared.
He asked officials to desist from thinking that they were landlords and people their tenants.
The Chief Minister said the bureaucracy must strive in bringing back the administration on track to dispel the general perception that it had collapsed in the State.
The State’s electorate has blessed the Congress party and installed it in power on account of failures of the previous government.
''It is the responsibility of the Government to respond to the grievances of the people. The aspirations of the people are very high and we do not want to disappoint them,” he said.
Officials must refrain from shifting responsibility to junior level officers, he said and declared that this type of passing the buck attitude will not be tolerated.
He also told senior officials to visit offices of taluk and district headquarters frequently to inspect functioning of departments’ offices.
The Chief Minister took exception to several departments not submitting utilisation certificates to the Centre over utilisation of funds allotted through central schemes.
“Without submitting the utilisation certificates in time, we cannot get additional central grants” the chief minister said.
He said the government was committed to correct utilisation of central funds in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as the state had got a bad name due to large-scale irregularities in its utilisation under the scheme during the BJP rule.
Siddaramaiah instructed officials of the Agriculture Department to make all arrangements to ensure timely delivery of seeds and fertilizers to farmers during the coming kharif season.