Maya keeps UP bureaucracy in suspended animation

The scene is playing out in district after district in UP as Maya is out on another, predictably pompously coined drive — Auchak Nirikshan (surprise checks), for physical assessment of development jobs in the state.

Over the four days of the first leg of the programme, which ended today, nearly 25 officials, including five IAS officers, were suspended. Others were at the receiving end of the famous Maya temper, some had adverse entries recorded in their service books, while yet more were transferred for ‘‘laxity’’.

Officials talk of one instance at a village where the officials got the boot because the people said they got nine hours of power, one more than the scheduled supply! The behenji felt the officials had ‘‘tutored their chamchas (stooges)’’, and so they had to pay. If she does find labourers at work when she lands in a village, she immediately asks them when they were put on the job.

Others give an example from her own Assembly segment, Harora. At Sandalheti village here, where the programme started on June 22, Mayawati suspended the district panchayat officer, K.S. Awasthi, for poor upkeep of the drains. When he complained that non-availability of power was the reason for poor maintenance, she suspended Executive Engineer, Electricity, P.K. Maheswari as well.

Next day, she toured Bijnore, Moradabad and Rampur districts, during which DM Bijnore S.P.S. Solanki was suspended, his counterpart in Rampur was transferred with an adverse entry in the service book while the Moradabad DM was given a terse warning to change his functioning or face the music within a month.

The Bijnore DM was told that she had found the development in village Harchandpur under him the worst of all the Ambedkar villages she had seen so far. Panic is sweeping through the Dalit mohallas of other Ambedkar villages in the state as well, as these are among Mayawati’s pet projects.

And the BSP chief is just warming up. As she told newsmen in Lucknow before setting off on the hectic tour of 18 districts. ‘‘I will go to every district of the state to ascertain whether officials have done the jobs as had been assured by them to the government in writing…I will not announce the particular village in the district where I will be going because this will give the officials time to cover up their shortcomings.’’

The suspension spree actually dates back much earlier, to May 3 — two months into her government — when then Barabanki DM O.N. Mishra was suspended on the charge that he was not available to the people at his office from 9 am to 11 am. Then came the turn of then principal secretary, Sports, Harish Chandra, who was made a scapegoat after a sly move on the part of her government to introduce a quota for Dalits in sports hostels of the state was leaked to the press.

But the exercise really picked up momentum when she started holding divison-wise review meetings, in which many heads rolled in December. The same month she also warned officials to improve their performance because she ‘‘would not spare anyone’’ during surprise checks starting June 22.

Even in her previous stint, Mayawati showed little patience with niceties. The second time she was the CM in 1997, over the six months of her rule, she had suspended 127 officials, including 32 IAS officers.

Given their past experience with her, the officials are keeping quiet to the insults and the instant justice, though the state has the largest IAS cadre in the country.

Says a senior officer who obviously doesn’t want to be named, ‘‘The weakness lies in ourselves as many of us have bowed to our political masters and have no courage to raise a voice of protest. There are certain guidelines for suspending an IAS officer, which include seeking an explanation from him for any laxity. But here the CM in herself is the guideline.’’

The protests, if at all, have been small and have quickly petered out. In Meerut, for example, power corporation engineers held protests yesterday at the zonal office against the suspension of executive engineers.

The UP IAS Association has been equally ineffectual. It had called an extraordinary executive committee meeting in December, after the last suspension spree, but barring a few of the younger lot, a majority had remained silent there. To make a virtue of the necessity, a delegation of the IAS Association had met Chief Secretary D.S. Bagga, and the ‘‘protest’’ was over.

Under the circumstances, a zapped Congress can only criticise and hope someone will listen. ‘‘Her agenda is fear, loot and corruption. The officials who do not follow her agenda are bound to get the punishment. She does what she wants and has managed to send a message to her vote bank of being an Iron Lady,’’ admits party spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh.

UP BJP media in-charge Vijay Pathak counters: ‘‘She is doing nothing wrong if she is suspending officials on the basis of their written reports that particular jobs have been done, and she finds that this is not true.’’

But there is another, little-known side to the picture.

Once the CM has conveyed the message she wants to, a majority of these suspended IAS officers quickly and quietly make their way back. Explains an IAS officer: ‘‘The state government has to submit before the Union Government a chargehseet sort of paper for suspending any IAS officer within 90 days of announcing the decision. A majority of the decisions get revoked within this period because such spot actions cannot be backed with sufficient grounds for suspending an officer of the all-India cadre.’’

As some would say, again, it’s all Maya.