Chief Minister Edappadi K. PalaniswamiOn June 1, as Tamil Nadu was stepping into the first phase of unlocking, an order issued by Chief Secretary K. Shanmugam to transfer senior bureaucrats in the health and town planning departments indicated that all was not well in the power corridors of the state secretariat. IAS officer S. Nagarajan, project director of the Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project was, on Monday, transferred and replaced by Ajay Yadav. Nagarajan was transferred as director of Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute, a post considered insignificant.
Nagarajan’s transfer came as a surprise for health department officials, as a reshuffle, that too, in a key post in the health department, during a pandemic, was unexpected. While there was no reason given for the reshuffle, a senior IAS officer in the state secretariat said, “It is the state government’s prerogative to transfer an official and every time, it is done for pure administrative reasons. But in the case of Nagarajan, it was not a routine administrative transfer.” The officer, who works closely with the health department in handling the pandemic, said that the process of Nagarajan’s transfer began at least a week ago, as the latter refused to give permission for certain private medical colleges for COVID-19 treatment.
Incidentally, Nagarajan’s tenure, in the past one year, has seen many transfers. He was serving as the additional secretary of the health department from June 2018 to April 2019. He was transferred as Madurai collector, in April 2019 during the Lok Sabha elections, after an alleged breach at a storage room in which records for the elections were kept. But, on June 5, 2019, he was transferred back again to the Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation department. However, Nagarajan was taken back into the health department only in September 2019, as project director of Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project. And now again, he has been transferred back as the director of Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation department. Apparently, the director post had been lying vacant since September 23, 2019, when Nagarajan was transferred as the project director of Tamil Nadu Health Systems.
Apart from Nagarajan, the other IAS officer to be transferred was Chandra Sekhar Shakamuri, who was in the Town and Country Planning department. The portfolio is currently with Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam.
Transfers and postings of IAS, IPS officers are vested with Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, but sources in the secretariat say that he does not have control over his cabinet colleagues when it comes to taking decisions. “If heads are not rolling even now, it is clear that the chief minister does not have the bridle in his hand and everything is out of his control. In March, when C. Vijaya Baskar was sidelined, it looked as if the chief minister was asserting himself. But there has been non-cooperation from every side,” said the senior IAS officer.
Palaniswami, who, in the beginning of March, said that only elderly are vulnerable to the coronavirus, did not get sufficient briefing on the pandemic from his ministerial colleagues and bureaucrats. In fact, this was why, on April 17, he said that the “number will come down to zero in the next three days”.
The next instance was the Koyambedu cluster which the government could not afford to control on its own. The first COVID-19 positive case from the Koyambedu market emerged on April 25. On May 1, as panic began setting in among the public in Chennai, the government brought back its former health secretary J. Radhakrishnan as the nodal officer for Chennai corporation, to handle the issue. Incidentally, Radhakrishnan was shunted out for the adverse comments by the Armughaswamy Inquiry Commission, looking into the mystery behind Jayalalithaa's death. Once Radhakrishnan took over, the market was shut down completely on May 8. Few days later, chairing a review meeting along with Panneerselvam, Palaniswami openly admitted that the “traders did not cooperate”.
Then came the issue of bringing back Tamils stranded in other states. The chief minister wrote to Union Minister Piyush Goyal, saying the government does not have enough isolation centres to quarantine people being sent back. But Goyal shot back saying the Railways had already sent the protocol to the states for quarantining the passengers.
On the other hand, while the state is split into eight zones based on the rate of infections, the west zone alone has remained green since May 3. This, when there are at least seven COVID-19 patients under treatment at the Coimbatore ESI Hospital and at the PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. Also, nine patients who arrived in Coimbatore from Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru were sent to their native places in Trichy, Erode, Namakkal and Theni only to keep Coimbatore—one of the busiest industrial belts in Tamil Nadu—green. Also, if Coimbatore turns orange again, it might hamper the political prospects of Palaniswami, as he hails from west Tamil Nadu.
The other reason is that Coimbatore is the fiefdom of Local Administration Minister S.P. Velumani, who is hailed as “corona warrior” in his home constituency by his partymen. Be it Vijay Baskar or Velumani or other cabinet ministers, all have, in the last few years, turned politically powerful.
“The chief minister is not able to exercise control over officials and even his own cabinet colleagues. He is not able to make any decision or even influence the transfer of an official,” said the senior IAS officer.
Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu continued to witness a surge in COVID-19 infections with 1,438 new cases and 12 deaths reported on Friday, taking the count to 28,694 and fatalities to 232. Of the fresh positive cases, Chennai alone accounted for 1,116 with the state capital's aggregate touching a whopping 19,826.
