Now, dist, taluk officials too must return phone calls of ministers

Govt makes rule mandatory for DCs, CEOs, police officers and others

Bengaluru Development Minister K J George might have asserted that he was not a telephone operator to take phone calls of people who try to reach him. But his government appears to have rendered heads of departments, district and taluk-level officials exactly that.

The Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (DPAR) has recently made it mandatory for district and taluk-level officials, including Deputy Commissioners, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), executive officers of taluk panchayats and district police officials to return the phone calls of ministers, legislators and VIPs if they fail to attend them. The officials have been asked to follow the direction strictly.

Calls to be returned soon
The officials have been asked to ensure that their personal secretaries or personal assistants jot down details of the caller if they are in an important meeting or attending any other important official work.

They have to return the calls made by ministers, legislators, including MLAs, MLCs and MPs, and VIPs soon after their meeting or any official engagements.

What has added to the officials’ problem is that the circular has not defined people who fall in the bracket of VIPs. This has left them fuming as they have been forced to return all missed and unattended calls of late.

Returning phone calls has in reality become a big headache for the officials. A deputy commissioner, it is learnt, spends an average of one and a half hour looking at his cell phone and returning the calls every day.

The district and taluk-level officials are, as a result, finding it difficult to find time to meet the public, official sources in the government said.

Inviting trouble
Non-compliance means inviting trouble, and there is a likelihood of such officials getting transferred – the way Anupama Shenoy, the Deputy Superintendent of Police of Kudligi taluk in Ballari district, was recently shunted out for putting Labour Minister and Ballari district in-charge Minister P T Parameshwara Naik’s phone call on hold.

Earlier, returning phone call was mandatory for only senior officials at the State secretariat – secretaries, principal secretaries and heads of department. It has now been extended to the district and taluk-level officials.