Shadow Correspondent
Jammu, Nov 18 :-
Despite four advisors having been appointed by the Governor in J&K to look after the work of the administration besides addressing the public issues, the State of affairs appeared extremely pathetic, said Harsh Dev Singh Chairman JKNPP and former Minister.
The Advisors were not only overburdened but had no connect with the general masses whose problems and grievances they were supposed to solve an redress, said Singh. He said that with each Advisor having been assigned the charge of 7 to 8 departments, it was virtually impossible to do justice with even a single department. Alienation had increased in such a situation with bureaucracy having become all powerful, he pointed out. He was addressing a press conference in Jammu today.
The remote and far flung areas were the worst sufferers of the present rule, said Singh. He said neither the Advisors had bothered to visit such difficult areas during the past five months and nor had the public of the said areas any access to these Advisors. “Inaccessibility was the biggest problem for the common masses as they had no approach to the corridors of power. It was not possible for common man to reach the secretariat, the seat of power and the Advisors too seemed to have abdicated their responsibility of reaching out to the general masses. The general governance as such suffered .The Advisors needed to come out of the cozy cushions of governance and interact with the common masses in the field so that the slogans of good governance could be translated into reality”, said Harsh adding that weekly schedule should be announced by each Advisor for meeting the people outside the secretariat also. He regretted that till date these Advisors had preferred to remain insulated in their cocooned and sanitized environment deliriously oblivious of the issues of the public.
Mr. Harsh Dev Singh further pointed out that merely four Advisors could not look after the work of 29 Govt. departments whose grants were annually passed by the legislature. As such, he added there was need to enhance the number of Advisors if the Governor Rule followed by the President Rule was to continue in the State as was being claimed in the media. Further, he said, local Advisors were required to be appointed as against non locals who had hardly any knowledge of the working of administrative set up and the peculiar problems of the State. He said that the two of the four Advisors who were brought from outside were wholly dependent upon bureaucracy and as such some corrupt officers were calling the shots making the Advisors dance to their tunes. It was mostly the writ of these insidious officers which was running in the State which could bring bad name to the Governor’s administration, he said, adding that the orders and directions of Advisors were hardly being implemented which was his personal experience as well. He appealed the Governor to take a periodic review and feed back of the functioning of various Govt. departments on a regular basis in the interest of the public good.
