UP lawmakers miffed over ‘chairs without towels’ for them at govt offices   

Lawmakers in Uttar Pradesh have always been touch-sensitive about protocol during official meetings and irrespective of the party in power, complaints of breach of guidelines have often cropped up.

Their latest gripe: not being offered chairs draped in sparkling white towels during visits to government offices.

As the complaints have begun piling, the state’s parliamentary affairs department has directed officials to ensure that visiting lawmakers get a chair “befitting” of their status. Simply put, if an official has a full-length towel on his chair—a usual sight in the state’s government offices—the same has to be ensured for the visiting lawmaker.

The directive was issued by J P Singh, principal secretary of the parliamentary affairs department, after Uttar Pradesh’s parliamentary monitoring committee met on September 6.

“It was revealed at a meeting convened to discuss protocol violations that in government meetings held either at the district level or at the state headquarter, the officials sit on bigger and ‘towelled’ chairs than the one offered to the lawmakers,” read Singh’s order dated October 7, 2024.

“It was also reported that in several cases officials conduct meetings sitting on a sofa while the lawmakers are seated in ordinary chairs. This is highly objectionable,” the order said.

In a bid to pacify the miffed lawmakers, state’s chief secretary Manoj Kumar Singh held a video conference with subordinate officials earlier this month to ensure administrative protocol is followed, according to which lawmakers are ranked above the officials.

The order marked to all additional chief secretaries, principal secretaries, secretaries, director general of police, all divisional commissioners and district magistrates lists down the dos and don’ts as mentioned in the subsidiary warrant of precedence - that lists dignitaries in order of precedence according to protocol at government programmes.

The latest order makes it to the list of similar directives issued in the past that seek to assert the superiority of elected representatives over government officials.

In January this year, a detailed order was issued by the then chief secretary Durga Shankar Mishra to all the officials reiterating the protocol for the elected representatives, right down to the rows – first row, of course - in which they would be seated in an official event.

“Only if the number of lawmakers is higher and they can’t be accommodated in the first rows, then they should be seated in next available rows,” the order read.

In February last year, the Parliamentary Affairs Department issued an order marked to all officials, reiterating the dos and don’ts of “phone” protocol. In the order, the officials were directed to ensure all phone calls from lawmakers to officials met with a response and in case the calls were not answered, a “call back” was a must.

To make sure they don’t miss out on any phone call made from an elected lawmaker, the officials were directed in the same order to ensure they saved the names of all lawmakers for easy recognition.

A couple of years before he became the UP Assembly speaker (2017-2022), Hriday Narain Dikshit, then a BJP leader had actually led a protest right outside the Vidhan Sabha demanding among other things, “proper respect” for lawmakers and political party leaders by officials.

“During our time, we accorded respect to all lawmakers. But then it is also true that usually complaints of protocol violations are made by opposition party lawmakers and this doesn’t change irrespective of the government in power,” former bureaucrat Prabhat Mittal told PTI.

Yet another former UP bureaucrat J S Mishra, now the Chancellor of Sushant University in Haryana, told PTI, “I would stand up and shake hands with each visiting lawmaker because a lawmaker represents the masses who have elected them. Usually, the towel in an official’s chair is for functional reasons as the concerned official has to sit there for long. But if someone demands a towel, then so be it.”

Some of the complaints made by lawmakers include not being invited to public programmes with former MLAs being preferred over sitting ones, and missing names in official plaques and government advertisements.