Bureaucratic hurdle for minister

Uttar Pradesh’s new health minister, Siddharth Nath Singh, was in for a shock when he set about putting his department in order. One of his initial instructions was to transfer some of the inefficient officers, but they were quick to get a stay on their transfers from the high court. Singh was told by his bureaucrats that there didn’t exist a transfers and postings policy. He ordered a senior official to rummage through government files, and it was several days before the relevant file, moth-eaten and chewed up by rats, emerged from the dusty government records room. Singh is now keen that the next meeting of the UP Cabinet passes a transfers and postings policy, which will mandate that no government servant can spend more than five years in an area. But requests, particularly those from his legislator colleagues, continue. They queue up to meet him inside the Vidhan Sabha when the Assembly is in session and put in requests for transfers of their friends and acquaintances.