IMPHAL, July 6 ? The downsizing exercise in the two-year-old Ibobi ministry in Manipur has hit the high-ranking officials in the state secretariat hard as several Ministers are pressurising these officers to expedite pending assignments. Sources here said that the Ministers facing uncertainty of their place in the new Council of Ministers have been pressurising the Commissioner and Secretary level officers to execute pending tasks and this has created chaos and anxiety at the hub of State administration.
Unable to bear the enormous pressure exerted by respective Ministers and a work load never faced before, some high-ranking Manipur secretariat officials have applied for leave or are not attending offices on one or the other excuse. Even those officials who attend offices are seldom found at their office rooms as number of ministerial summoning has increased manifold in the last few days.
Telephones rings remain unanswered at the official?s rooms these days, and ordinary staff are also scurrying. Most of the pending assignments of the ministers either concern transfer matters or those works that would have personal implications in case the task are not completed before the downsizing comes into effect.
One particular instance is a minister asking a Commissioner to pay in terms of money to beneficiaries within a specific deadline when the Minister was informed of rice stock running low for allotment to the beneficiaries under a government scheme. Under such trying circumstances some ministers are also facing tremendous pressure from government officials as well as from the public urging the concerned minister to approve their personal interests like in ?transfer? and contract-related favouritism when the minister is still in power.
Inter-ministerial lobbying are also on, pertaining to transfer matters with the ministers asking their counterparts to approve and stay transfer orders of their ?known/close clients?. As the downsizing deadline draws closer, these ministers have embarked on a mission to complete their unfinished task mostly concerning transfer of their respective department staffs and employees.