AURANGABAD, DEC 3: The normally well-adjusted bureaucrat, ever ready to serve his boss is now desperate to take on the elected representatives, if a recent meeting between the IAS association delegates and the Maharashtra Chief Secretary, Arun Bongirwar, is any indication.Alarmed by the growing incidents of misuse of public funds and attacks on officials, especially in Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh's Marathwada region, these officers are said to have sought immediate measures to contain the belligerent tendency among people's representatives.Among twenty-five members in the delegation were the Association Secretary, Satish Tripathi, Ravibhushan Budhiraj and Nand Lal.What's more interesting is that the IAS cadre members have also pointed an accusing finger at their arch-rivals, the IPS officers, for failing to take appropriate legal action against the elected representatives.``Very often we find that the police let off the accused on bail after carrying out an arrest only on paper,'' the officials lamented. The Director General of Police, Subhash Malhotra was also present during the interaction between Bongirwar and the officers, sources said.While citing instances of the humiliating treatment meted out to bureaucrats, special mention was made of the instance in which R R Patil, Minister for Rural Development and Ajit Pawar, Minister for Irrigation, pounced upon the former chairman of the MSEB, Yashwant Bhave. Bhave has since been removed from the post.The officials complained that the two ministers were putting pressure on Bhave to take all responsibilities of the failures of the MSEB though he had taken over the post only a few months back.As for Marathwada, the Nationalist Congress Party Vice President Vinayak Mete, Sharad Pawar's blue eyed boy, beat up a Road Transport Officer, S M Date, after summoning him to his house in Beed.In Sillod (Aurangabad), Sub Divisional Magistrate, Varsha Thakur, was humiliated publicly by BJP MLA, Kishan Kale, who barged into a meeting where he was not even invited. Kundalik Nagare, Congress MLA from Jintur, who was allegedly involved in an attack on the Municipal Council office, went to the extent of threatening the Parbhani collecter that he would set the town on fire if the administration tried to reveal his name.Yet another women officer, Anjali Bhaiwal, Gangapur Tehsildar was intimidated by Appasaheb Mane, brother of MLA, Annasaheb Mane, when she sought time to give him details of compensation paid to sugarcane growers.
