Purohit goes back, now UT officers hope for rollback of his decisions

A key decision to impact the UT officers will be the lifting of the ban on air travel to Chandigarh and luxury stay of the officers in the national capital. As UT officers have to travel by train, this is one decision they are looking at.

After a report by The Indian Express last year, Purohit had banned the air travel and luxury stay of officers going from Chandigarh to Delhi. While specifying that “officers should lead a simple life”, the Administrator ordered that they will travel only by Shatabdi. He also ordered that they would stay only in state bhawans and not any luxury stay.

The then Administrator who would even summon officials on the basis of newspaper reports would closely watch the activities going on in each of their departments.

Another ambitious project which was put on hold by Purohit has officers of Chandigarh Housing Board eagerly waiting for its revival. The CHB had to come up with housing and had even readied brochures when Purohit had stated that there was no space or infrastructure to accommodate more housing in Chandigarh because of which he put the scheme on hold. Interestingly, while CHB was yet to obtain environmental clearance from the Chandigarh Pollution Control Committee (CPCC) for the scheme’s rollout, it had gone ahead with floating the tenders, something that had not gone down well with Purohit.

The board then had to cancel tenders worth Rs 200 crore. The board had planned 340 flats worth crores in Sector 53.

“Yes, we are hoping that this scheme shall be revived now. The brochure and everything stands ready,” said a senior officer of the board.

Not just this, the need-based changes which were to give relief to 50,000 allottees of the board were also put on hold. Sources said that the Administrator was not in favour of allowing violations in the units as they were not safe. The members in the board meeting were also given a feeler that the need-based changes shall not be regularised for which they were waiting for the Administrator’s exit.

Purohit had also been acting tough to ensure that UT officers meet public during the said meeting hours so that the public isn’t harrassed. An order was also issued seeking to ensure that no meetings are scheduled on public meeting days and public meeting hours.

This too kept the officers under constant glare of the then Administrator.