PM Modi raps top bureaucrats over procedural delays, grievances pile-up

Prime Minister Narendra Modi rapped top bureaucrats over procedural delays in a UP highway project, piling up of pension grievances and cost over-run of Sikkim airport project at Pakyong near Gangtok, at the monthly PRAGATI meeting last Wednesday.

Published on: Oct 28, 2016, 21:23:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi rapped top bureaucrats over procedural delays in a UP highway project, piling up of pension grievances and cost over-run of Sikkim airport project at Pakyong near Gangtok, at the monthly PRAGATI meeting last Wednesday.

PM Narendra Modi interacted with secretaries and state chief secretaries through video conferencing under pro-active governance and timely implementation platform. (Reuters)

Modi was interacting with secretaries and state chief secretaries through video conferencing under pro-active governance and timely implementation platform, according to government sources.

Expressing concern over the flood of pension grievances, he directed Labour secretary M Satiyavathy to ensure that people in the organised labour get their pension papers ready before retirement.

Modi apparently said that the sector should get pensionary benefits like senior bureaucrats on retirement. The observation was made after the secretary made a detailed presentation on how her department was addressing grievances.

Modi apparently questioned her on the rising number of complaints which indicated that the system was not functioning, sources said.

The Prime Minister then questioned Roads and Transport secretary Sanjay Mitra on the status of the 74 km-long Delhi-Dasna-Meerut highway, for which Modi had laid the foundation on December 31, 2015.

Apparently, the secretary informed that the project was progressing slowly due to environmental issues related to felling of trees, shifting of utilities and land acquisition.

Concerned, Modi asked UP chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar to help expedite the project with cabinet secretary P K Sinha, who would monitor it, the sources said.

The PM told the secretaries that if projects are delayed like this, next time he would “satisfy himself” about clearances obtained before laying any foundation and maintained that he does not believe in laying foundation for projects which would be inaugurated by the next government.

The sources said Modi was also irked by land acquisition and compensation issues delaying the Pakyong airport project in Sikkim. As the state’s chief secretary A K Srivastava began reading a long note on delays, Modi told him that he ought to have all the facts on his fingertips as the airport would provide much needed tourism revenue to his state.

As of now, Sikkim is linked by a two-lane road to Silliguri in West Bengal which remains choked with traffic most of the time. For flight services, people have to go to Bagdogra, near Siliguri, as there is no airport in the state.

The cost of constructing the Pakyong airport, 30 kilometres from Gangtok, has doubled since the contract was awarded in 2008, with local protests over compensation being frequent.

Slated for inauguration next year, the airport will ensure that Sikkim people do not have to travel 124 km via the choked road to catch a flight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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