Ministry follows Raman to Delhi

All 17 ministers and half-a-dozen top bureaucrats will thus migrate to Delhi for a day to attend the meeting scheduled for May 11.

Raman Singh has been confined to Delhi after he underwent surgery for spondylitis at a hospital in the national Capital last week, ahead of campaigns scheduled in Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. The Chief Minister is convalescing since and is unlikely to return to Raipur before May 17.

With the Assembly Budget session convened from May 24, Raman Singh needs to check up on the homework done by his ministers. State Chief Secretary S.K. Mishra has already been to Delhi to discuss the agenda for the meeting.

Besides, Singh has been in constant touch with Principal Secretary Vivek Dand and other bureaucrats who have been asked to ferry important files ahead of the Budget session. The Budget exercise, being overseen by Finance Minister Amar Aggarwal, is already over and the Cabinet, in its meeting on May 11, will approve the Budget proposals.

‘‘Since the Chief Minister has been advised rest by the doctors, there was no option but to convene a Cabinet meeting in Delhi,’’ said Anil Tuteja, Deputy Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office.

The delegation is not piling up though, Tuteja insists. Only four or five bureaucrats, including the State Finance Secretary, will migrate to the national Capital for the May 11 meeting, Tuteja said, instead of the existing team of nearly 20.

The meeting will be the first out-of-state for Chhattisgarh. Former chief minister Ajit Jogi had earlier held Cabinet meetings outside the capital — in the tribal areas of Bastar and Sarguja — to focus on issues relating to the backward districts.