The Transfer Raj

While the provocations for the UP IAS officers have been piling up (see graphic alongside), the most recent trigger were two law-and-order review meetings, during which Mayawati suspended a divisional commissioner, two range DIGs and two SPs and ordered adverse entries in the service books of nearly a dozen officers.

While whimsical transfers are not unknown in UP, what has raised eyebrows during Mayawati’s current tenure is the government’s reluctance to give transfer details even to the media. ‘‘It’s a matter of policy that my department not provide these details,’’ says Rajendra Bhaunwal, secretary, appointments. ‘‘You should approach the Information department.’’ Only, this department directs inquiries right back to the secretary, appointments.

This, according to senior officers, is typical of the way the bureaucracy is treated in the state. ‘‘Merit and other considerations are not important. Transfer orders are issued without any respect for procedure — otherwise, why would more than a dozen officials be shifted three and four times within a week?’’ asks a senior officer on condition of anonymity.

Consider these facts:

• Of the 1,200 transfers ordered during Mayawati’s current tenure (since May 2002), 35 IAS officers have been moved about thrice.
• Some posts, like Labour Commissioner, saw five officers coming in and going out. There have been four agricultural production commissioners and 12 — no less — people taking charge as CEO, NOIDA and Greater NOIDA.
• District Magistrates have been changed in 64 of the 70 districts; in 27, DMs were moved twice over.
• H K Paliwal, former appointments secretary, has been successively placed as secretary, forest, and then with rural engineering services, and then sent back to the forest department.
• Harish Chandra, secretary, Panchayati Raj, was placed in four different departments, and then suspended, before being rehabilitated.

Interestingly, UP was the first state in the country to set up a Civil Services and Establishment Board (under the Rajnath Singh government) last year. But the Board has not been convened even once by Mayawati, not even to ratify transfers she ordered.

‘‘Most of the transfers were effected in blatant violation of the CSB guidelines and Supreme Court orders,’’ alleges a member of the UP IAS Association. ‘‘The CSB clearly states that officers should be given a clear reason for their transfer.’’

Apart from filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that its transfer orders did abide by the Board rules. Mayawati has gone on record to say in the state assembly, ‘‘Nobody raised any objection when the Congress CM of Punjab effected 800 transfers within a few months of coming to power. Why, then, the hue and cry over transfers in UP, which is almost five-six times the size of Punjab?’’

Ahmad Hasan, Samajwadi MLC and leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, believes he has the answer: ‘‘The manner in which the CM is shuffling officers smacks of dishonesty. The casteist angle and money changing hands cannot be ignored either.”

A cornered BJP, on the other hand, has taken the safe line: ‘‘Transfers are a prerogative of the CM. Maya-wati is not doing anything wrong because every CM wants trusted officers in major posts,’’ says Kalraj Mishra, in charge of BJP affairs in UP.

Senior politicians, however, point out that large-scale transfers have been the norm in the state since 1991, when Kalyan Singh literally churned the state bureaucracy. ‘‘On an average, no district in the state has had a DM for more than six months (since 1991) while transfers should be effected once in three years,’’ says Vaishali Saxena, who has conducted a study titled ‘The Effect of Transfer and Promotion on Employee Morale’. ‘‘If all the transfers since 1991 are clubbed together, the total will be more than 7,000. Each CM has had his share in the game.’’

ASSAM
Marking Change