Shuffle game: Mulayam sets a record

The trend started in 1989, when UP began its brush with coalition politics. Now, a survey reveals that the percentage of officials in a district of the state with a tenure of less than one year is 47.6, while that of less than 18 months is 35.4. Of the total 81 districts in UP, only one, Lakhimpur Kheri, has a DM who has served more than two years, says the survey.

Accused of making money on transfers, Mayawati now gleefully hits back. ‘‘Make a list and compare the number of transfers during my tenure and the two-month stint of Mulayam,’’ she said during her visit to Lucknow.

However, the love for transfers cuts across party lines. The three BJP CMs in the state from 1997 till 2002—Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh—had together shifted over 1,500 officials.

The state has seen over 9,000 transfers since 1990, at an average of almost two daily, according to Bureaucracy on Wheels, a book by Vaishali Saxena. ‘‘Things were not bad before the coalition era but now the bureaucracy is engaged in a perpetual game of musical chairs. This at a time when the state is reeling under a fiscal crisis and each transfer costs anything between Rs 8,000 and 12,000,’’ she said.

While Appointments Secretary Pradeep Shukla could not be contacted, former state police chief and Chairman of the SC/ST Commission Sri Ram Arun laments: ‘‘The Britishers had fixed a minimum of three years for transfer, but in UP, officials are shifted in weeks. Senior officials are forced to keep their families at one place while they continue to move.’’

Even an Allahabad HC order criticising ‘‘successive governments for treating public servants like shuttlecocks to be banged and battered around on political, caste and other extraneous considerations’’ has had no effect. The court also directed the then government to frame a transfer policy, but successive regimes have ignored it. On the Opposition benches now, the BJP can afford to sermonise. Senior leader Kalraj Mishra admits transfers affect the morale of bureaucracy and advises that ‘‘some pattern should definitely be followed’’.