Politics embroils government programme

Rai Bareilly district administration detached itself from a Central Government programme and refused to cooperate, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 11, 2006, 22:18:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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When it comes to politics even government programmes gets embroiled.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry realised this when the district administration in Rai Bareilly, the constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, detached itself from a Central Government programme and refused to cooperate. The ministry was organising a Public Information Campaign (PIC) about the Central government schemes.

The sudden turn of events took place after the Samajwadi Party MLA from Bachwara Ram Prasad Akhela opposed the Central government programme and threatened to damage the event venue. The threat apparently prompted the government on Monday to send two senior officials to Rai Bareilly to diffuse the situation.

The ministry of Information and Broadcasting had planned a five-day Public Information Campaign (PIC) from Dec 18 onwards in Bachwara, a SP bastion in Rai Bareilly. The campaign initiated from the current financial year, around the country, at the cost of Rs 12 crore is run in rural India to create awareness about various Central government programmes.

But, it was the timing of the event, four months before the scheduled elections that did not go well with the Samajwadi Party leaders led by Akhela. Learning about the event, he accused the Central government of misusing its resources to give publicity to the Congress in the state and asked the district administration not to become part of the political campaign. He even threatened to rummage the event if the Centre dared to organise it.

The only way-suggested by Akela was that half of the publicity should be given to the UP government programmes, a condition unacceptable to I&B ministry officials. When the field officials of the ministry contacted the district administration, they took a U-turn and refused to cooperate, a ministry official said. On Sunday, the ministry was briefed about the situation.

On Monday afternoon, two senior officials — AK Saxena, in-charge of PIC and Harsh Bhal, Deputy Director General in Press Information Bureau — were rushed on a rescue mission to Rai Bareilly, in a last ditch attempt to organise the mega-event. "Their task is to talk to the district administration and if required to the MLA to diffuse the situation. They have a couple of days at hand to resolve the matter," an official said, optimistically.

The UP government has been accusing the UPA government at the Centre of mistreating the state with regard to disbursement of resources and making an attempt to topple the government.

The Centre, on the other hand, is accusing Uttar Pradesh of poor performance in its contribution to national economy and overall growth of the country. At the National Development Council, the Planning Commission asked the UP government to improve its financial condition, attract more private investment, revive agriculture through incentives and empower people with Right to Information to usher an era of inclusive development.

Email Chetan Chauhan: cchauhan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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