Delhi Chief Secretary M M Kutty has been asked by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to ‘explain’ the reason behind his absence from the event that was held to celebrate the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri. (PTI)
Delhi Chief Secretary M M Kutty has been asked by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to ‘explain’ the reason behind his absence from the event that was held to celebrate the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri at Vijay Ghat on Monday, October 2. The event that was attended by the President Ram Nath Kovind and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was organised by the Delhi government’s Art, Culture and Language Department. The President, the PM, Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia paid floral tributes to former Prime Minister Shastri on the occasion. An aide of the chief minister said that Kejriwal is ‘unhappy’ over the absence of MM Kutty at the event, reported the Indian Express.
Apart from Kutty, the aide claimed that other bureaucrats too skipped the event. The aide was quoted as saying that the CM was upset over the casualty with which the officials treated a national-level event like this. Meanwhile, Kutty refused to comment, reported the Indian Express.
As per the report, the Kejriwal dispensation and the bureaucracy have always shared an uneasy relationship. There have been instances which were marked by frequent sparrings between the CM and the bureaucrats, primarily due to the city’s complex administrative structure in which the Lt Governor enjoys primacy. In 2015, as per the report by the Indian Express, the officers had gone on mass leave to protest the AAP government’s decision to suspend two DANICS-cadre (Delhi, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Civil Service) officials.
