The Hindu : `Administrative reforms panel should have been retained'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 11, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

`Administrative reforms panel should have been retained'

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE MARCH 10. The view that the Government should have retained the Administrative Reforms Commission and entrusted it with the work of overseeing the implementation of its recommendations was expressed at a seminar organised by the Institute of Parliamentary Affairs, here on Sunday.

The member of the Congress Working Committee and former Union minister, Ram Niwas Mirdha, who inaugurated the seminar, said that the commission should not have been wound up. A "core group'' should be set up to go into the implementation of the recommendations. There should be continuous review, he added.

Mr. Mirdha, who is also the Chairman of the AICC Election Authority, spoke of the resistance in the various States to the implementation of the panchayat raj system. The governments were also averse to holding elections to cooperative and other bodies, he said.

The Secretary to the institute, M.C. Shanthamurthy, said it was wrong to have dissolved the commission. If administrative reforms were delayed, Karnataka would go the way of Kerala, he warned.

The Karnataka Administrative Reforms Commission, which was headed by the former Law Minister, Haranahalli Ramaswamy, was dissolved within days of its presentation of the final report.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Ramaswamy said that though he would not claim that the report was perfect, an honest attempt had been made to tackle the problems afflicting the administration. The principles laid down by the former Union Home Minister, Govind Ballabh Pant, that there should be a human touch to administrative reforms and not a mechanical one, had been adopted. So also the consensual approach.

A big problem faced in public administration was the lack of courtesy shown to the common people by the bureaucrats. The report had caught the attention of States such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Mr. Ramaswamy spoke of the high expenditure on the civil service. He commended the efforts being made by the Chief Minister of Kerala, A.K. Antony, to tackle the problem.

He said Mr. Antony had the support of the people of Kerala during the 32-day strike by the government employees there. Even today, 13 States were finding it difficult to pay salaries to their employees, according to the Union Minister of State for Disinvestment and Administrative Reforms, Arun Shourie. Even the Centre was faced with the problem of a bloated bureaucracy, he added.

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`Administrative reforms panel should have been retained'