Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants his Ministers to be well-acquainted with bureaucrats of their home States for the smooth functioning of government, and to accelerate its decision-making processes.
In the Cabinet meeting held on Wednesday, the PM told all his Ministers to organise informal meetings with officials who hail from their home State or belong to their home State’s cadres, regardless of whether they did or did notwork for their own departments.
“The idea is that such meetings will ensure better inter-Ministerial coordination and understanding of other portfolios,” a Cabinet minister said.
More importantly, red-tape would be cut. According to sources, Mr. Modi explained that it would take far less time to pick up the phone and speak to the concerned official directly, instead of exchanging views on files.
‘Resolve deadlocks’
With the next General Elections just 18 months away, the Prime Minister is believed to have said that inter-Ministerial deadlocks need to be resolved quickly.
“He said that if, say, a certain Ministry’s policy is stuck because of a pending clearance or an objection to another, then it would be far simpler to reach out to the concerned bureaucrat rather than wait for weeks for files to traverse the complex bureaucratic web,” the Minister added.
Of the 74 Ministers in the Narendra Modi government’s Council of Ministers, the maximum number are from Uttar Pradesh (10), followed by Bihar (9).
The PM’s latest diktat is in line with his own actions of the past few months. In the last few weeks, Mr. Modi has held five rounds of meetings with Additional Secretaries and Joint Secretaries. According to sources, the Prime Minister willalso meet Deputy Secretaries, the first authors of any policy decision in the government.
