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| Working overtime to maintain law and order, officers rue unnecessary meets with lawmakers | | | Hyder Ali
Early Times Report
Srinagar, July 24: Even as the official machinery is struggling to restore law-and-order in restive Kashmir, their “precious time goes waste in attending unnecessary” meetings with ministers and other lawmakers from the ruling coalition.
Highly placed sources said that every evening, the ministers from the state government call a joint-meeting of its lawmakers and officials from civil administration, police, paramilitary and Army, at a secured location here.
It was reliably learnt that the meetings last for two to three hours, while some of the lawmakers “poke nose into technical issues, which only the experts of the field know better.” This way, the officials have to spend their crucial time in the meeting rooms, when their presence is actually needed more in the field to analyze situation and to take requisite measures. Talking to Early Times, a senior bureaucrat said over the years, in times of any crises in the state, it has been a precedence that in the evenings civil and police administration consolidate their reports of the day and decide strategy for the next day. “We have our own set procedure of doing things and don’t mind calling informal meetings with our colleagues from the police to instantly decide on the future course of action,” the official said asking not to be identified.
“In fact,” he said “officials from civil and police administration prefer to be seated at a joint control room for monitoring the situation.” “But this time, however, our precious time goes waste interacting with them(lawmakers), who are religiously calling the undue meetings,” said a middle-rung official. Officials said if ministers need regular updates it could be sent to them even without holding meetings. Insiders said these meetings have become like “reality show” where at times a government cameraman comes with some “director” who says: “Lights. Camera. Action!” “And this is when the ministers start more people-friendly conversation. This is against the protocol… We are not used to such dramas,” some officials said. “At a time when Kashmir continues to be on the edge, how can you expect our officials to be too free to listen to the politicians all the times?” they asked. Quoting instances, an official said, the lawmakers at times give “silly suggestions.” “One of the ministers told the meeting that we should not act by prescribed Standard Operation Procedure in tackling law and order situation of mob control but try innovation which the politician had evolved as figment of imagination,” said some officials.
They said some of the lawmakers want them to act as “yes-ministers.” Ironically, though such meetings often criticize officials nobody discuses the “blunders committed by the ministers.” On July 21, when police officially announced that there would be no relaxation in curfew anywhere in the Valley, the same evening one of the ministers got an official handout released that schools have reopened and that attendance was thin due to hartal. Officials said another problem was that none of them was being exempted from the meetings even if he or she is over busy with the monitoring of situation. “We need to time to restore normalcy, such
frequent meetings can wait.” |
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