In the on-going battle between urban affairs & employment minister Ram Jethmalani and secretary Kiran Agrawal, the former has fired a fresh salvo by taking away most of the effective powers of the secretary and giving them to special secretary S Chattopadhyay. An internal memorandum of the ministry, signed by the minister himself, also makes it clear that the special secretary will put up files directly to the minister, thus bypassing Agrawal.
Consequent to the memorandum, the special secretary will be the chairman of Delhi Metro Railway Corporation and will be in charge of all matters pertaining to housing, urban transport, Municipal Corporation of Delhi, New Delhi Municipal Corporation, Central Public Works Department, Delhi Development Authority, Housing & Urban Development Corporation, National Building Construction Corporation and Hindustan Prefabricators Ltd.
Chattopadhyay will also be in charge of slum improvement clearance and upgradation projects, externally-aided projects, housing, urban development & water supply schemes, foreign tours of all officials, estate matter, integrated development of small and medium towns and all land matters including Land & Development Office. Earlier, almost all these matters used to pass through Agrawal.
The secretary, on the other hand, has been left with the directorate of printing, controller of publication, controller of stationary, central government employees welfare housing organisation, night shelter for pavement dwellers, low-cost sanitation for liberation of scavengers and Building Material Technology Promotion Council. Other matters under Agrawal include the 20-point programme, Swarn Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojna, local self government, all matters relating to the NCR Planning Board, poverty alleviation and all matters related to Delhi Urban Art Commission.
The memorandum also marks a break from tradition as the minister has personally marked it down to all sections, desks, units and cells in the ministry including the office order book, service book seat and the Hindi section for the Hindi version. In fact, the memo number _ UAEM/98/3179 _ is the minister's personal number.By tradition, such orders are passed by the minister to the administration, which would put it up for the section officer or the under secretary. Subsequently, a note would be issued signed in general cases by the section officer and in special cases by the under-secretary. The redistribution of work in the ministry comes in the wake of a war of words between Jethmalani and Agrawal.
Agrawal had in fact written a letter against the minister to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee following which the Prime Minister is said to have spoken to Jethmalani. This was followed by Jethmalani writing to the Prime Minister targeting Agrawal by questioning the method of finalisation of the financial bids for Delhi's Mass Rapid Transport System project. According to sources, Jethmalani was trying to assess the MRTS tenders in accordance with the procedure prevalent in the government, but Agrawal was within her rights to adopt the other procedure as the MRTS body is not strictly a government arm.
