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| Why should Ministers' cellphone bills be paid from public exchequer? | | | Abodh Sharma
Early Times Report
Jammu, Aug 23:Even as Chief Minister and Dy Chief Minister swear by responsive and accountable governance, their own ministerial colleagues are not responding to frantic calls made to them on their official numbers whose huge bills are paid from public exchequers.
The official numbers of all the Ministers have been put on display on the official website of the Government of Jammu and Kashmir for the convenience of general public, but most of them evoke a response. Repeated calls on the official cellphone numbers of most of the ministers fail to evoke any response as ministers respond only to the calls of their political workers, staff, friends and relatives whose numbers they have saved in their contact lists.
Even journalists who try to reach out to them for government's reaction to vital issues concerning their departments fail to contact the ministers, whose number can otherwise be found busy for long durations.
It is pertinent to mention here that the idea behind paying huge telephone bills of the ministers from the public exchequer is that they should respond to public calls. "When busy, the ministers can direct their PAs and PROs who are also paid from the public exchequer to respond to calls on their official cellphone numbers" said a president of the mohalla welfare committee, who is also a staunch BJP worker, anguished by no response to his repeated calls to a senior BJP minister. "For years, I have worked with most of BJP ministers on party forum, but today, their PROs and PAs either do not respond to calls or invariably tell that the minister is in a meeting" he added.
A BJP functionary meanwhile disclosed pleading anonymity that the party leadership, including Ministers have been complaining that their statements were misrepresented by media during the recent agitation over AIIMS and hence they are apprehensive of talking to media. He however confessed that the BJP Ministers had squandered the advantage of close public contact that they had in the beginning. |
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