Bureaucrats’ turf war like Indo-Pak war:MP CM
In what is being seen as an indictment of the state bureaucracy, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that sometimes the way bureaucrats fought, it appeared as if it was “India-Pakistan war”.
The chief minister said this while addressing the bureaucrats on occasion of Civil Service day at the Academy of Administration in Bhopal on Friday. Top bureaucrats of the state, including the chief secretary Basant Pratap Singh, the DGP Rishi Kumar Shukla were present.
The chief minister went on to say that this estrangement between different groups of bureaucrats affected work and was not good for development. He advised all the officers to “leave their ego and work as a team,” and added that all news of groupism among officers was not good.
The chief minister’s words are being read in the context of the tug-of-war going on at present between the IAS and the IPS lobby over introducing police commissioner system in Indore and Bhopal, which would entail giving certain magisterial powers now vested with the district magistrate to the police. The IAS lobby is against introducing this system, arguing that it would vest too much power in the hands of the police.
The chief secretary Basant Pratap Singh sought to play down the differences between the different streams of bureaucrats. “The chief minister said it in lighter vein. See, the DGP and I go in the same car. Do India and Pakistan go in the same car?” he asked. He denied that there was any groupism between officers of different departments and said work was going on normally.
