Written by: Express News Service
2 min readLucknowAug 31, 2010 06:51 AM IST
First published on: Aug 31, 2010 at 06:51 AM IST
With the state government agreeing to go by the rule book,the one month long stand-off between the Raj Bhawan and the UP government over the issue of administering oath of office and secrecy to the two members of UP State Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPSERC) finally ended on Monday,as Cabinet Secretary Sashank Shekhar Singh administered the oath of office to Meenakshi Singh and Sriram.
The oath-taking ceremony was delayed by four weeks,as both the members,in violation of the rules,had joined their new assignments without taking the oath of office and secrecy. Consequently,Raj Bhawan had refused to administer the oath of office to both the members.
As per the rules,the chairperson and members of the commission can take charge of their duty only after being administered the oath by Governor or some person appointed on his behalf. “To end the deadlock,the state government was left with no option but to cancel the notification of August 2 in which it had published the appointment of the two members. A fresh notification was issued on August 26,” said a senior official of UPSERC. “It was a hasty step on the part of the two members who joined the new assignments without taking the oath of office,” the official added.
The appointment of both the members will,however,be effective from the date of joining and their terms will be for five years.
The names of Singh,a retired IRS officer,and Sriram,a retired chief engineer of UP Power Corporation,were cleared for the posts of member accounts and member technical respectively by the selection committee headed by the Chief Secretary Atul Gupta on July 31. This was approved by the chief minister on August 1,followed up by a notification for their appointment on August 2. The very next day both the members joined their duties. Though they were attending the office,they were not discharging their normal duties,said sources.
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