Bihar: Lines drawn for ministers’ pvt secretaries

Government has issued guidelines to the departmental heads to on the nature of work and duties to be performed by external and official private secretaries (PS) of cabinet ministers.

The Bihar government has issued guidelines to the departmental heads to on the nature of work and duties to be performed by external and official private secretaries (PS) of cabinet ministers, said an official privy to the development.

Education minister . Chandrashekhar’s private secretary (HT file)

As per the direction issued by state chief secretary Amir Subhani on Friday evening, it is clearly stipulated that external PS, who is appointed on the advice of the minister, should not be allowed to deal with official work of the minister. “Official PS, who hails from the state administrative service, are authorised to help the ministers in the official work,” the guidelines stated.

“The government had to issue the direction since there was no clear-cut division of work between the two private secretaries. In fact, the previous governments might not have felt the need to notify the division of work, as both private secretaries of the ministers understood their roles and hence did never cross the lines,” said the chief secretary.

In July this year, additional chief secretary (education) K K Pathak had barred the then private secretary (external) of education minister Chandrashekhar from entering the department’s office. The external PS had on July 5 written a letter to Pathak, stating, “The minister has expressed his displeasure over the recent developments, in which it has been noticed that lots of negative news related to the department are coming in the media. Even official letters or departmental communications are leaked to the media before they reach the minister’s cell, which is against rules about public servants’ functioning.”

Taking strong objection to PS’s letter, the department, in its reply, said, “You (the PS) are requested to learn about the process before sending letters to government officials. You had already been told in the past that you are not entitled to communicate directly with the government officials. By writing such ‘useless letters’ (written without applying mind), you are wasting the time of government officials. It appears that you have no work to do in the minister’s cell.”

The unseemly episode had led to the minister skipping his office for almost three weeks.

An official said the new guidelines had to be issued since work in some of the departments was getting hampered due to uncalled for intervention by the external PS of the ministers.

“... private secretaries (of administrative services) will do all interdepartmental communications on behalf of the minister/department on the direction of the minister since the PS (administrative service), a government officer, will also be held responsible for handling departmental files pertaining to the department on the direction of the minister concerned,” the letter reads.

Explaining the duties of the private secretary (external), it says, “Since he/she is a private person, he/she will be responsible for a minister’s tours and outdoor political programmes. He/she will also look into non-department appointments of the minister. He/she must refrain from correspondence or oral communication with department officials and confine themselves to ‘non-government’ functions of the minister. He/she will not engage in any sort of written communication with the departmental officials.”

A senior officer of the chief secretary office said that the office had received a complaint from a department, in which an external PS was seen presiding over the meeting of district officials called by the director. “The external PS reviewed the work of the department as if he was the minister. An external PS of the other department was seen interfering with tender allotment process of the department,” said the officer.