All Swachh Bharat and no ‘work’ have made babus an unhappy bunch. With the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan taking up most of their time these days, senior officers in the Capital’s municipal corporations say routine functions are getting neglected.
An officer in the North Delhi Municipal Corporation said long meetings with the Central government’s departments, as well as Ministers, MLAs, and the Delhi Government have become part of the workday after October, when the campaign was launched.
“We spend all our time preparing reports for meetings and attending them. Our main job is to improve sanitation, but we are not being able to supervise that work as we are being called into meetings all the time,” said the officer.
Another issue is of cancelling programmes and inspections for meetings at the Centre or State levels. “We have to cancel scheduled inspections with councillors and our own staff when we get called for meetings by the government,” said the officer.
Another official in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation said that some of the meetings were a “waste of time”.
“We are here to plan future strategies for the corporation and make systemic changes. But, all we are doing now is making reports and checking attendance of sanitation workers,” said the official.
The Delhi High Court Bar Association (HCBA) has extended its support to an agitation of lawyers in western Uttar Pradesh for establishment of a Bench of the Allahabad High Court in the region.
The HCBA feels that the establishment of a High Court Bench will help the litigating public of western U.P. and reduce their problems.
HCBA president Rajiv Khosla said the litigants of western U.P. had to go to Allahabad, spending time and money, for resolution of their disputes.
“We are surprised why the government has taken so long to resolve the long-standing demand of lawyers, who have been agitating over the issue for several decades,” he said.
Mr. Khosla pointed out that the establishment of a High Court Bench in western U.P., adjacent to Delhi, had become necessary after the creation of the National Capital Region, which had led to development of cities such as Noida and Ghaziabad in U.P. as well as several towns in Haryana.
These places had become popular among the citizens of Delhi for residential purpose, said Mr. Khosla.
While affirming that a High Court Bench in the region would help reduce the suffering of the residents of these towns, Mr. Khosla said the HCBA would provide all assistance to the Lawyers’ Action Committee of western U.P. in achieving the objective.
A major reshuffle in the Delhi Police ranks, expected much earlier, is still being held up because many police bureaucrats are ‘squatting on their current seats’, insiders say.
Close to a dozen IPS officers belonging to the AGMUT cadre, who were previously posted in different parts of the country before being transferred to the Capital, are awaiting postings as a result.
Soon after a change of guard at the helm of the Central government in mid-2014, many joint commissioners and special commissioners of police had applied for deputations in different law enforcement, paramilitary police, and Central intelligence agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), and the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
These were officers who had been posted in Delhi for over two years and feared being transferred. Most of them belonged to the posts of Joint Commissioner of Police in Delhi. Unfortunately for the applicants, most were denied these deputations by the respective forces of their choice and only a handful were approved.
While the successful applicants then needed to relinquish present charge and move to new organisations, the remaining should have been transferred to other locations under the AGMUT cadre.
Months down the line, however, no movement has taken place out of the Delhi Police. On the other hand, the purported replacements of the officers concerned are sitting at home waiting to take their place with no end or defined waiting period in sight.
