NK'S POST

MP Assembly Election Update: 14 October 2023 NK SINGH चुनाव केवल सभाओं, रैलियों और बैनर-पोस्टर से ही नहीं लडे जाते. मंजे हुए नेता राजनीति के शतरंज पर ऐसी चालें चलते हैं, जिसका देखने में सीधे चुनाव से कोई लेना-देना नहीं होता, पर उनका प्यादा भी बादशाह को बिसात से बाहर निकाल सकता है. कांग्रेस की लिस्ट आने के एक दिन पहले दिग्विजय सिंह ने ट्वीट कर कहा कि मध्य प्रदेश सरकार ने कई युवा आईएस अफसरों की सीआर इसलिए ख़राब कर दी क्योंकि उन्होंने अपने सीनियर अफसरों और बीजेपी के “गैरकानूनी आदेश” मानने से मना कर दिया था.  “सिद्धांतवादी” अफसरों को उन्होंने भरोसा दिया कि सत्ता में आने के बाद कांग्रेस इन मामलों पर पुनर्विचार करेगी. प्रदेश में पहली दफा एक दर्जन से भी ज्यादा आईएस अफसरों को ख़राब सीआर मिली है. कांग्रेस के इस स्टैंड का सीधे तौर पर इलेक्शन पर कोई असर नहीं पड़ेगा. पर जमीनी स्तर पर इससे बीजेपी को नुक्सान होगा.  प्रियंका द्वारा स्कूली बच्चों को ५०० से १५०० रुपयों महीने की स्कालरशिप की घोषणा ने भाजपा को पशोपेश में डाल दिया है. इसकी काट उन्होंने एक मनोवैज्ञानिक युद्ध में ढूंढी. मुख्यमंत्री शि...

NK SINGH The opposition Congress party has objected to the extension in service given to Madhya Pradesh Chief Secretary BP Singh. MPCC chief Kamal Nath complained to Election Commission this week that the BJP government was trying to “influence the process of free and fair elections” by extending Singh’s tenure by six months.  Singh was supposed to retire on June 30, but last week the government decided to delay his superannuation till the end of the year. The six month extension to the Chief Secretary would cover the period of forthcoming assembly elections, due by November this year. The Congress alleged that the Chief Secretary’s tenure was increased “to use his administrative clout” for the upcoming polls.  Although the CS was not directly involved in election work, argued Nath, “he has direct control over officers who are assigned with election duty.”  The Congress, said the letter to the EC, had “reasonable apprehension that the Chief Secretar...

NK SINGH RCVP Noronha, the most illustrious IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh, never minced his words. In his autobiography, A Tale Told By An Idiot, he has given a long list of do’s and don’ts for civil servants. One of these reads: “Don’t allow yourself to be identified with any person or party. In certain circumstances this may cost you a degree of inconvenience, but at least it will keep you out of jail.” The golden rule seems to have become outdated. The District Collectors keep landing in controversy quite frequently in MP. The latest to join the list is Chhatarpur collector Ramesh Bhandari.   The state government organised a function in the district last week for the beneficiaries of its various welfare schemes. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan addressed the meeting. The collector was present in the audience, as he should have been. At the end of his speech, Chouhan, the archetypal politician, asked the audience to pledge their support to bring back to p...

NK SINGH Last week’s administrative reshuffle has catapulted Madhya Pradesh to a unique position. Now, every fifth district collector in the state is a woman. Of the 51 collectors in MP, as many as 10 are ladies. This has happened for the first time in the state. The post of a collector, although not very high in the bureaucratic hierarchy, is definitely the most visible and potent symbol of administrative power. Women officers have gained not only numerically, but in importance in the labyrinthine power structure, getting prize postings. For the first time in the history of MP, the Government has posted a woman IAS officer, Chhavi Bhardwaj (2008 batch) as collector of an important district like Jabalpur. It is her second inning as collector. Similarly, it has posted Preeti Maithil (2009 batch) to Rewa, considered a difficult district, in her second inning as collector. Shivpuri is considered a political minefield for officers. Here the government has reposed its confidence in...

SUDEEP BANERJEE (1946 - 2009) NK  SINGH IRONICALLY, what   finally broke the ice was TS Eliot’s Wasteland! The atmosphere was a little heavy as Sudeep Banarjee walked into that hotel room to meet the crew of Granda TV, credited with producing some of the finest, award-winning documentaries on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. The producer, Laurie Flynn, was very tense. He had been waiting for weeks to get permission to shoot the Union Carbide plant. And Sudeep had kept him on the tenterhooks. W hen the two met for the first time --   my friend Laurie and Sudeep -- there was a mutual distrust on both sides. Laurie, almost a card-carrying radical, expected to meet a dyed-in-the wool bureaucrat. Sudeep, a passionate votary of the New World Order, expected an insensitive firnag of “anyone here been raped and speaks English” type. Du ring introduction Laurie was informed that the bureaucrat who had come to meet him was also a poet. But Sudeep, probably, could read the...

NK SINGH Two additional commissioners of Bhopal Municipal Corporation were all over social media last week after they were unceremoniously packed off to their parent departments. An enquiry committee had found them allegedly guilty of issuing completion certificates to incomplete buildings last year. The certificates helped builders avoid coming under the purview of MP Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA). The brazen effort to help builders made RERA chief Anthony de Sa, a former chief secretary of the state, livid and he had lodged a complaint at with the government. The two shunted officers, aggrieved by the corporation’s unilateral decision, gave vent to their anguish in social media. Both of them belong to State Administrative Service and there was an outpouring of sympathy for them from friends and fellow officers. Their main grievance was that they were not heard before pronouncing the verdict. Malika Nigam, among those who were packed off, commented on Fa...

Madhya Pradesh Some little known facts about OP Rawat NK SINGH Om Prakash Rawat, who takes over as Chief Election Commissioner of India on January 23, had recused himself in April 2017 from hearing cases related to Aam Admi Party. He was, at that time, the Election Commissioner. (In October that year, however, he joined back the EC's full bench for hearing the case.) Rawat's action was extraordinary, probably the first of its kind in Election Commission of India's history. He took the step after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal publicly said he did not believe in independence of two Election Commissioners ---- AK Joti, a former chief secretary of Gujarat, and OP Rawat, a retired IAS officer of MP cadre. Joti, being the senior most Election Commissioner at that time, subsequently became the Chief Election Commissioner in July. Now Rawat takes over from him. Joti served as chief secretary when Narendra Modi was chief minister of Gujarat. After he retired, ...

Steel frame is rusted, but can still deliver NK SINGH Christmas is time to celebrate. And MP Government has reasons to cheer. Its bureaucracy is in good spirits. Chief Secretary Basant Pratap Singh was a happy man as he went on LTC last week – his first in ten years – after pulling off one of the most stupendous tasks ever undertaken in the annals of State administration. Burning midnight oil, the Government has succeeded in disposing of a record two million revenue cases in just six months. Yes, you heard it right. More than 20 lakh cases over a period of six months, deciding, on an average, 7 cases every minute! The good old steel frame may be rusted, but it is still capable of delivery. “It was part of our special drive to clear pending revenue cases,” says Arun Kumar Pandey, Principal Secretary of revenue department. The drive was undertaken in July after Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had threatened to “hang upside down” District Collectors if they f...

DB POST 30 July 2017 Why MP CM wants to hang Collectors “upside down”? NK SINGH Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is, normally, polite to the core. Social grace, or small talk, may not be his strong point. But friends and foe agree, alike, that he is courteous. “I try not to hurt even a worm, I sidestep it,” he said in MP assembly earlier this week, describing his own personality. Hence he took everyone by surprise last week when he publicly threatened to “hang upside down” District Collectors if they failed to clear pending land dispute cases. Warning the officers of strict action on pending patta (land ownership right) and demarcation cases, he said: “If they don’t resolve the issue within a month, I would make sure that they are removed.”  Collectori karne ke layak nahi chhodunga, was the colourful phrase used in colloquial Hindi. Chouhan is being hauled over coal for his comments, and rightly so. The Opposition Congress leader criticised him fo...

An MP cadre IAS officer is "Leader of Planet and Conqueror of Earth" NK SINGH A little known NGO from Indore has come out with a documentary film on the life and time of P. Narhari, a former Collector of Indore. The mesmerised filmmaker is convinced that the IAS officer of 2001 batch was the best thing to have happened to the city after the first steam locomotive arrived in 1893. The 15 minutes biopic starts with eulogising the 42-year-old officer as Leader of Planet, Conqueror of Earth and Creator of New Faith. It is the first ever documentary made on the achievements of a bureaucrat, at least in MP. The film was shot with active participation of the IAS officer and his family members, who posed for the movie, with the sahib straddling his domain like a king. The film leaves no one in any doubt about the protagonist’s greatness. Narhari, it claims, has changed thousands of lives, coming to help of people who have been disappointed everywhere else. He has left ex...

Something is rotten in the State of MP NK SINGH Prime Minister Narendra Modi, talking about black money at a public rally in Ghazipur earlier this week, made specific mention of corruption in Madhya Pradesh. In a pointed reference to disgraced IAS couple Arvind Joshi and Tinoo Joshi, both of whom were arrested and dismissed on corruption charges, Modi commented in his typical colloquial style: “When income tax people went to some sarkari babu’s house in MP, they found three crore rupees under his bed. Whose money is this? Does not this money belong to the poor?”   The notorious case of the MP cadre IAS couple has forever been etched in public mind as an example of corruption permeating sections of bureaucracy. So much so that the Prime Minister, when he wanted to give an illustration of massive corruption, readily recalled the case of the ‘Madhya Pradesh babu who slept on a pile of banknotes’. The income tax department had raided Joshis’official residence at Bhopal in ...