HYDERABAD: Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy's claim that he was not aware of the contents of the now short-lived media gag order (GO 938) has not come as a surprise.

The Opposition parties have often pointed to the lack of coordination among senior officials and within the Chief Minister's Office. Dr. Reddy has reshuffled the bureaucracy on numerous occasions to give shape to his dream of ushering in `Indiramma rajyam', a euphemism for a pro-poor and pro-farmer governance.

However, criticism is gaining ground that his casual attitude towards the mistakes committed by the bureaucracy is leading to slackening of administration. Although he will complete three years in office on May 14 this year, he does not have a cohesive team of officials. This is evident from Dr. Reddy's own admission that key issues are not being brought to his notice or attended to seriously by his secretaries.

Information gap

On quite a few occasions, Dr. Reddy learnt to his dismay that timely information about a brewing crisis did not reach the CMO and local officials acted independently. As a result, the problem was exacerbated.

A case in point was the police firing in the Gangavaram Port controversy. In the absence of timely and correct inputs from the Visakhapatnam district administration, the CMO responded belatedly. Similar was the controversial order issued last year by then Visakhapatnam Collector, Praveen Prakash, seeking to gag two Telugu dailies. The Chief Minister pulled him up and ordered cancellation of the order.

The Government also faced flak for being flatfooted on the issue of chikungunya by admitting the existence of an epidemic nearly two months after it broke out.

En masse transfer

Senior bureaucrats recall how the Chief Minister ordered the en masse transfer of 73 IAS officers, but had to rescind his orders in order to oblige several requests. The number of IAS transfers effected in the first year of his rule was around 150 and en masse transfers have now become the rule rather than exception.

There is another criticism that the CMO is unable to handle the pressure because it is working at cross-purposes.

There is lack of bonhomie among the team members and each secretary assisting him prefers least interaction. Several MLAs and even Ministers have complained that they are not properly received by any of them.

At the recent Pradesh Congress Committee's two-day `chintan baithak', AICC general secretary and incharge of Andhra Pradesh Digvijay Singh advised Dr.Reddy that "you have to work with the same set of officials who worked with the other Governments. What matters is whether we can extract work from them to our satisfaction and how."

Coming from a leader who served as Chief Minister for two terms, the statement has a lot of relevance for Dr. Reddy.

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