The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Lack of information irks Minister

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Tuesday, Jun 17, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Lack of information irks Minister

Special Correspondent

BANGALORE: Shortcomings in the functioning of the Department of Information came to the fore during a meeting of senior officials of the department, which was chaired by Information Minister Katta Subramanya Naidu on Monday.

Senior officials of the department, who had come from across the State, were caught off guard as they could not provide certain information Mr. Naidu sought from them. An upset Mr. Naidu said: “This indicates that none of you have been working.” Addressing the meeting at the Vartha Bhavan here, Mr. Naidu said the department should be equipped to provide any information sought by the people. Besides information on various programmes of the Government, the department should have complete data on the social and economic profile of every district in the State.

To check whether the officials were equipped with such data, Mr. Naidu sought to know from them the population of Bagalkot district.

Commissioner for Information K.V. Ravindranath Tagore asked an official from Bagalkot district to provide the statistics. But the official said he did not know what the population of the district was.

When Mr. Naidu asked the official from Bagalkot whether he was aware of all the programmes of the State Government, the official said he had information only on some projects. The Minister posed the same question to other officials and none of them, including Mr. Tagore and Director of Information Vishu Kumar, were aware of all the programmes.

Jayanagar MLA B.N. Vijay Kumar was present at the meeting.

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