Mayawati leaves her ministers 'powerless'

Now, BSP supremo will appoint or suspend officials

Henceforth, the ministers can only make recommendations for effecting transfers of officials of their departments to the chief minister, whose decision would be final.
The ministers cannot directly appoint, promote, suspend or terminate the services of the officials without obtaining consent of the chief minister.

The decision to strip the ministers of the authority was taken in a meeting of the Uttar Pradesh cabinet held on Friday evening.

As expected, none of the ministers at the meeting dared to protest though some of them later did confide that the decision would virtually reduce the ministers to “mere showpieces”.

A senior minister, preferring anonymity, said it would make the chief minister’s secretariat all powerful as such decisions would be taken from there.

Incidentally, the decision comes after Mayawati’s recent meetings with her ministers, individually as well as collectively, in the wake of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) poor show in the recent Lok Sabha polls.

During the meetings, the BSP supremo had expressed her serious displeasure over the style of functioning of the ministers and virtually held them responsible for the party’s poor performance in the elections.

She was particularly annoyed with her “brahmin” ministers for their “failure” to bring their fellow castemen to the BSP’s fold in the elections. In her meeting with the BSP office bearers and MLAs, Mayawati was told that the ministers never paid any attention to the issues raised by the party workers and leaders at the district level.

The MLAs told Mayawati that the administration also turned a deaf ear to their complaints against corrupt officials. “Officials openly took bribe for recruitments for class-four posts even from dalit candidates,” some MLAs had complained.

They reportedly told the BSP chief that the ministers failed to take action against the guilty officials despite their demands.

“By stripping the ministers of their authority, the BSP supremo has sent a strong message that she wants results,” quipped a senior BSP leader while talking to Deccan Herald here on Saturday.
DH News Service