: Chief Minister of Puducherry V Narayanasamy on Tuesday hit out at bureaucrats and the Lieutenant Governor, saying their attitude was to obstruct the implementation of several welfare schemes decided upon by the cabinet.
Addressing a meeting 'Makkal Kural' organised by the territorial government in a village near here to receive grievance petitions from the people, he said his government was struggling to overcome several hindrances in implementing the schemes decided upon by the cabinet.
The Chief Minister said the files containing decisions of the ministry were returned with a negative reply from the secretaries to government departments and there was a consequently a delay in implementing schemes.
Narayanasamy and his cabinet colleagues have received several petitions from the villagers at the 'Makkal Kural' meet the purpose of which was to help rural people present their lists of woes to the Ministers.
"We come and meet you at your doorstep instead of expecting you to meet us at our office," he said while assuring that the grievances listed in the petitions would be rectified in 30 days.
Expressing shock over the absence of secretaries at the meet, the Chief Minister said he would call for an explanation from them for not attending the meeting and added: "We will not hesitate to take action against the absentees."
The Chief Minister further said the union territory has a 'wonderful' Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi who has been obstructing welfare schemes by not according her approval.
He said the implementation of free rice scheme was for instance encountering obstacles because of the Lieutenant Governor's insistence that only cash equivalent of the quantum of rice envisaged for the cardholders should be paid through banks to beneficiaries and that there should be no supply of rice through ration shops.
The Lieutenant Governor was sticking to her stand on cash payment despite the sustained plea of the villagers that they wanted only rice, not money. The Central government had also found merit in the stand of the Puducherry government that only rice should be supplied under the scheme', he said.
Bedi, who was 'appointed' by the Central government was hindering the decisions of the government 'elected' by the people. "We have been struggling for the last three years since our government came to power to implement several schemes because of the obstacles the Lieutenant Governor and the high-ranking officials were placing," he said.
Narayanasamy claimed that "despite these obstacles we are coming out successfully in several areas such as waiver of crop loans due from farmers, supplying free power to the agriculturists, incentives at the rate of Rs 10,000 per hectare of land cultivated by farmers and meeting the housing needs of the poor."
He said the territorial government was in a piquant situation with the Centre also not earmarking sufficient grants as were made available to the states.
He concurred with the view of the PWD Minister A Namassivayam who had said earlier that the government should take action against secretaries to the territorial government who had failed to turn up at the Makkal Kural meeting.
"We will not hesitate to seek an explanation from officers and will take action without fail," he said.
Territorial assembly speaker V P Sivakolundhu, district Collector T Arun and Ministers and legislators were among those present on the occasion.
The Embalam constituency where the Makkal Kural programme was held was the second constituency to have the meeting after Nettapakkam where the meeting was held about three months ago.
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