Will picket Secretariat if demands are not met, warn Puducherry MLAs

PUDUCHERRY: At a time when the AINRC-BJP government led by N Rangasamy and Chief Secretary Ashwani Kumar are not seeing eye-to-eye on issues, a delegation of 10 MLAs consisting AINRC, BJP, independent MLAs supporting AINRC and a lone Congress MLA called on the Chief Secretary Ashwani Kumar at his office and demanded setting right the ‘improper’ assessment of rain damages, not filling up of vacant posts, among other things.

They told the Chief Secretary that if he fails to address the issues they would resort to picking the Secretariat. Though several government proposals are not getting the green signal from the Chief Secretary, lower projection of damages caused by recent rainfall and the quantum of relief indicated to the Central team, seems to have sparked the episode.

The CM had in his memorandum to Union Home Minister, requested `300 crore relief for damages caused by the unprecedented rainfall in Puducherry and Karaikal regions. But, the administration has projected damages only to the extent of around Rs 15 to Rs 20 crore to the Central assessment team that visited Puducherry, said G Nehru, independent MLA. 

The damages have not been fully accounted as officials were too lethargic to visit each and every place where there were damages. BJP MLA PML Kalyanasundaram said that though Puducherry has 20 IAS officers and an equal number of IPS officers, they were reluctant to make field visits.

Further, there is shortage of staff in all departments and work is either not getting done or is delayed. 
There are large number of vacancies to an extent of 10,000, but the proposals from the elected government in filling up posts are not getting the green signal from the Chief Secretary, they said. Deputy Tahsildars, junior engineers, school teachers, electricity linemen, Village Administrative Officers, police constables and several other post are lying vacant, he said.

What’s lacking
Lower projection of damages caused by recent rainfall and the quantum of relief indicated to the Central team, seems to have sparked the episode