‘Such laxity is..’: Delhi minister Atishi pulls up top bureaucrat over delay in disbursing flood relief fund

The minister directed the chief secretary to submit a status report to her and the chief minister Arvind Kejriwal by Monday 6 pm.

A fresh spat between Delhi's Aam Aadmi Party government and bureaucrats surfaced on Saturday with NCT's revenue minister Atishi "pulling up" chief secretary Naresh Kumar over the disbursal of flood relief amount.

The minister directed the chief secretary to submit a status report to her and the chief minister Arvind Kejriwal by Monday 6 pm.

Atishi also directed to deploy all officers on weekends to process the compensation amount so that the money can be transferred to the affected families' bank accounts on Monday.

In a letter to the NCT's top bureaucrat, Atishi said that she was "shocked" when found that only 197 out of 4,716 affected families had received ₹10,000 of the ex-gratia amount sanctioned by the Delhi government.

"It has been 10 days since the Cabinet took the decision to give ₹10,000 relief to families affected by floods. But in 10 days, 19 IAS and 18 DANICS officers - along with 6 DMs, 6 ADMs and 18 SDMS - have not been able to process this relief package for a mere 4,716 families," the minister wrote.

The chief secretary had on July 15 deputed senior IAS and DANICS officers to monitor and assist the district authorities flood-affected areas in rescue work.

"Given the number of officers deployed for flood relief and rehabilitation, each of these officers had to process the relief for 70 families. This means they had to provide relief to seven families per day. And that too has not been done," Atishi wrote.

Such "laxity" is "absolutely shocking", she added and wondered what would these officers' normal workday be like when they were showing laxity in times of a disaster.

Earlier, ministers Saurabh Bharadwaj and Atishi had taken on the principal secretary (home) over the deployment of the army and NDRF to control a breach in a drain regulator that caused Yamuna to inundate the ITO region.

(With inputs from PTI)