Home minister says babus behind gaffe

Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde who is known for several gaffes  has taken to task babus in his ministry for some of the embarrassing moments.

Shinde, a day after reading twice a portions of his statement in Parliament on terror attack on a CRPF camp that left MPs dazed, held a meeting with top bureaucrats of the ministry, from joint secretary and above.  In the brief meeting that started around 1.30 pm, Shinde was peeved and held accountable babus for badly drafting reports that led to errors and bad publicity.

It is learnt that in the meeting, also attended by Home Secretary R K Singh, it was decided to have a mechanism for getting immediate reports round the clock on country-wide incidents.

Ministry sources said that if the officers get reports in time, they can pay more attention to drafting and cross checking facts. On many occasions the ministry gets first information from the television channels’ live coverage of events linked to law and order and internal security.

Recently, there was delay in getting report from Jammu and Kashmir on the terror strike on the CRPF camp. Sources said that it was felt that departments and states can send report either to ministry control room that functions 24x7 during holidays or at night and to concerned officers.

Right now, the control room gets a sort of bulletin states’ police and paramilitary forces send on law and order incidents.  Previously also, due to lack of coordination and information, the Army could not conduct flag march in Assam in the initial days which ended up in ethnic clashes between Bodos and illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam.

Serious differences between home and defence ministries had cropped up because of lack of sharing of inputs. Also, to avoid leaks from the MHA, Joint Secretary (police) Dr Nirmaljeet Singh Kalsi has been made the official spokesperson. To check his litany of gaffes, Shinde obviously did not throw any light in the meeting on how he intends to check slip of tongue and frequent attention lapses – which are making him prone to commit blunder.