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Anirudha Karindalam
Anirudha Karindalam

STATE VS GOVERNOR

Puducherry govt urges Centre to recall Lt Guv Bedi

Kiran-Bedi (File) Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi | Agencies

Arvind Kejriwal and team now have company. The Congress government in Puducherry has been disgruntled with Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi’s style of functioning. An all-party delegation, barring the BJP, is set to meet the president, prime minister and the Union home minister this week to brief them on the situation in the state and they would urge the Union government to recall Bedi.

Last week, after Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy described the Puducherry assembly speaker’s decision to replace municipal corporation commissioner R. Chandrasekaran as binding, Bedi objected. She said, “The order of transfer of municipal commissioner of Puducherry is not a small administrative routine matter. It is an officer appointed by the Lt Governor who could be removed only by the Lt Governor.”

The chief secretary of the state Manoj Parida did not adhere to Bedi’s instruction to not execute the ruling by the speaker to relieve Chandrasekaran of his duties. A seething Bedi then recommended to the Union home ministry to initiate action against Parida for violating service rules.

The complaint against Chandrasekaran was that he was not responding to the MLAs when it came to tackling public issues. The ruling against Chandrasekaran was based on the speaker’s privilege motion. The director of the art and culture department, S. Ganesan, has taken over as the municipal commissioner of Puducherry. Said Ganesan to THE WEEK, “There is no confusion. I am acting by the orders given to me. I have no problems if Chandrasekaran comes back. At the end of the day, there has to be continuity.”

CM Narayanasamy refused to comment on the matter. Said he to THE WEEK, “This is a matter relating to the administration. I shall be violating the oath of secrecy if I speak against the Lt Governor to you. Let us wait for a few days.”

Trouble has been brewing between Bedi and Narayanasamy for a few months. In January, Bedi had cancelled Narayanasamy’s order banning the use of social media for official work. Bedi had said then, “If Puducherry has to be a progressive Union Territory, it cannot be retrograde in communications. Hence, the CM’s order stands cancelled.”

Soon after that, Bedi suspended an officer of the joint secretary rank and handed him to police after the officer, by mistake, forwarded a porn video on a WhatsApp group that Bedi and senior officials of the Puducherry government were part of. Some officials called Bedi’s decision hasty and arbitrary.

Officers of various departments in Puducherry are now in a fix. They don’t know whose orders they should follow: those of the ministry or of the Lt Governor.

Said V. Saminathan, BJP’s president in Puducherry, “Bedi is doing good work. She is taking action against corrupt officials. The Congress government is getting jittery. Majority of the people in Puducherry are with Bedi.”

A BJP leader and a former Indian Police Service officer of the 1972 batch, Bedi took charge as the 23rd Lt Governor of Puducherry on May 29, 2016.

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Topics : #Kiran Bedi

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