In the last week of April, Chief Secretary Mohammad Iqbal Khandey held review meetings at district level in Jammu to assess the status of development activities in respective districts. It was in these meetings that he came to the conclusion that in many public issues there was lack of coordination between the district level officials and the Secretariat. Owing to this discrepancy progress in developmental and administrative works would often meet with inordinate delay. It will be reminded that the Services Act now in place in our State, also requires the authorities to furnish reports of progress in the developmental work undertaken. Moreover, funding for annual and five year plans from the Planning Commission also carries the condition of assessing the progress of development from time to time.
Keeping this in mind the Chief Secretary has begun calling for Action Taken Reports (ATRs) on regular basis from the Administrative Secretaries, Divisional Commissioners and all the Deputy Commissioners so that grievances of the people could be addressed in shortest possible time. The Chief Secretary has found that there is lack of proper coordination between the District Administration and the Civil Secretariat. CS receives complaints from the public and these are forwarded to concerned secretaries who, in turn, forward these to the district authorities for consideration. But at no stage is there any movement that would show what action the concerned officer either at the District or at Secretariat level has taken to mitigate the complaint. The CS has taken up this matter seriously by appointing an officer in his office to study the in-coming ATRs and then brief him on regular basis. The objective behind seeking ATRs on the public issues is to ensure that administration remains prompt to the disposal of the public issues instead of sleeping over the matters for long time. Hopefully, this initiative will go a long way in ensuring proper coordination between officers right from Civil Secretariat to down the line in the districts. It is learnt from reliable sources that public complainants pertain to almost all major services and functionaries who have to deal directly with the people in general.
We appreciate the step taken by the Chief Secretary to streamline administration to the entire satisfaction of the people and their demands. However, it has to be borne in mind that changing a firmly set bureaucratic and administrative culture takes a long time. It is actually changing the phenomenon in which the system has been working since a long time. Our administrative structure is complicated and so many stages have to be covered before new methodology is adopted. Nevertheless, the fact is that he has taken the initiative and means to carry it forward. According to this initiative, the administrative structure will be receiving input from different Government officers and agencies working on district level and thus coordination will be forged between the two wings.
Expansion and all-sided development is underway in the country and the State. There has been a strong cry for accountability coming from civil society. The work of each department has increased several-fold, so has the funding. Besides normal developmental activities, some big projects floated and supported by the Central Government have also been extended to our State. Their completion has to be time bound but that is not happening on the ground. The State Government would not want to cut a sorry figure when the time for assessing the functionality and delivery of these mega projects comes. While appreciating the initiative taken by the Chief Secretary, we would also like to caution him that positive and productive coordination between various agencies is a task fraught with difficulties essentially on account of lack of sense of urgency and commitment at various levels of administration. This is no small a task that the Chief Secretary will be undertaking. Obviously he shall have to be assisted by a sub-structure within his office to prepare periodic reports on action taken by the subordinate chapters not only to remove public complaints but also to assess the progress of developmental works in hand.
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