UP govt tells officers to save phone numbers of MPs, other lawmakers

The Uttar Pradesh government has asked all senior officers to save the cell phone numbers of MPs, MLAs and MLCs from their respective districts on their phones and either receive their calls or ensure a call-back

The Uttar Pradesh government has asked all senior officers to save the cell phone numbers of MPs, MLAs and MLCs from their respective districts on their phones and either receive their calls or ensure a call-back.

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An order in this regard has been issued after an increasing number of complaints that the officers were not paying any attention to the public representatives.

“Please direct all the officers working with you to save the mobile numbers of members of parliament (Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha MPs) and the state legislature (MLAs and MLCs) from district of their posting and receive their calls in accordance with the orders of the state government issued earlier,” said JP Singh, principal secretary (parliamentary affairs department) in an order dated March 23, 2021. The order was sent to all the additional chief secretaries, the director general of police (DGP), principal secretaries, secretaries, divisional commissioners and district magistrates.

“If unavailable to take the call or (busy) in a meeting, the public representatives should be called back on priority basis. The grievances raised or suggestions given by them should be disposed of as per rules on priority,” said Singh.

Although the state government has consistently issued orders to officers to ensure that any call from MPs, MLAs and MLCs should be received or they should be called back, the officers have often claimed they did not come to know when such calls were made.

A senior officer said the state government had reiterated its orders about calls of public representatives as the officers were apparently not paying any attention to them.

In his order, the principal secretary (parliamentary affairs department) has also referred to the orders dated October 18, 2017, October 10, 2018 and October 22, 2019. He noted that despite these orders, the officers were neither receiving the calls being made by the public representatives in the public interest nor were calling them back. He further noted that the officers in their explanations often said that the (phone) number of the public representative was not saved on their cell phones.

“Yes, the state government has been issuing such orders in the recent past, asking officers to receive calls of public representatives or call them back, if in a meeting. The officers, however, do not pay any heed to them. This only means that the state government was only issuing orders on paper and did not want that the officers to pay any real attention to the public representatives,” said leader of opposition (state assembly) Ram Govind Chaudhary of the Samajwadi Party.

“In a democratic system, the public representatives have to approach the administrative officers to raise the genuine grievances of the people and officers should also respond to them. This will help the state government in resolving the problems of its electors,” said Yashvir Tyagi, former professor of the department of economics at Lucknow University.

There has been a consistent rise in complaints from public representatives about the officers not paying any attention to them and not according them the protocol due to them. Those aware of the developments said the state assembly had constituted a committee chaired by speaker Hriday Narayan Dikshit to monitor complaints of violation of protocol. The state assembly secretariat has received about 50 or more complaints of violation of protocol. A meeting of the monitoring committee has been convened on April 15, 2021 and the cases of violation of protocol may be put up at the meeting for further action.

Besides complaints of violation of protocol, some members have also given notices of breach of privilege by the officers. Taking note of such complaints, the speaker had announced in the state assembly on March 2, 2021 that the information given by three members — Amitabh Bajpai, Nand Kishore Gurjar and Ram Saran Verma — would be made part of day’s proceedings. While Bajpai had given information about breach of privilege against an ADG-rank officer, Gurjar had informed about contempt by one SSP rank officer and some other officers. Verma’s information was about an officer earlier posted as the district magistrate in his district.