Chandigarh, November 11
Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s move to make his council of ministers attend their offices on at least three days a week here seems to have failed on the first day of its implementation with only a few SAD ministers and no BJP minister attending offices at the Secretariat here today.
On November 6, the Chief Minister’s office had issued a press note “directing” all his council of ministers to remain in Chandigarh three days a week so that they could meet the general public and address their grievances immediately.
Chief Minister’s media adviser Harcharan Bains had stated in the note that ministers “will remain” in Chandigarh on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He said Badal had given these directions to his council of ministers during a Cabinet meeting and asked them to “strictly adhere” to this schedule.
Today was the first day of the implementation of these directions. Most ministers as well as all chief parliamentary secretaries gave a miss to their offices. No BJP representative was present in his office. Punjab has 17 Cabinet ministers, excluding the Chief Minister, and 14 chief parliamentary secretaries.
Cooperation minister Kanwaljit Singh, who can be found in his office every day, finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who is also a regular to his office, and ministers Janmeja Singh Sekhon and Bikram Singh Majithia followed the orders.
Four floors, on which the ministerial offices are situated in the Secretariat, wore a barren look with the only persons around being the personal staff of the ministers and parliamentary secretaries. In fact, the staff said their bosses had not attended their offices yesterday also.
There had been reports that most ministers were not attending their offices. This, sources said, was giving a bad name to the government and the Chief Minister wanted to address the issue keeping in mind the parliamentary elections as well as the fact that most ministers had been absent from their offices for nearly one month during elections to the panchayati raj institutions in April-May.
Capt Kanwaljit Singh said departmental work did suffer in case ministers did not attend their offices. When told that some ministers felt they had more freedom to meet people outside the constituency, he said might be the case, but in order to bring about efficiency in delivery system, one needed to attend his office regularly.
