After Swadheen Kshatriya(60) retired as chief secretary, he has secured a plum assignment for the next five years with the newly created post of chief commissioner for right to services. In the corridors of power, it is believed that he was initially vying for Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commissionchairman’s post and later the State Information Commission too. However, both did not work out. But since the Maharashtra Right to Public Services Act was enacted in April 2015 and the chief commissioner not appointed, the process was expedited and a proposal for Kshatriya’s appointment was submitted to Governor Vidyasagar Rao on February 27, a day before his retirement. But Kshatriya is not an exception; most of his predecessors have secured plum assignments after retirement. Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has been insisting on involvement of Lokayukta, the leader of opposition and journos in cabinet meetings to ensure complete transparency in decision-making. Thackeray’s contention was if media is allowed to witness proceedings of the standing committee in the BMC, why should they not be allowed to sit in on the weekly cabinet meetings. Thackeray probably does not know that a decade ago, the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had mooted such an idea for a press box in the cabinet hall. Deshmukh had found that the agenda and the entire discussion by the cabinet was made available to media verbatim. Initially, he thought bureaucrats were leaking the information, but later he found some senior ministers were talking to scribes on their phones while the meetings were on. Deshmukh then thought of putting up a press box in the cabinet hall to prevent distorted versions from appearing in the media. However, the idea was never implemented.The gamechanger?
A debate is on about chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s decision not to contest the BMC mayoral election. After the BMC results, the situation was a delicate one for Fadnavis. BJP had not secured a clear majority in the BMC to stake claim to the mayor’s post. Fadnavis did make attempts to cobble up the numbers. Apart from holding talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, there were discussions with Thackeray too. When it became clear that Shiv Sena had the numbers and BJP would lose if it decided to contest the election, Fadnavis dropped the idea to contest for the mayor’s post as well as for all statutory committees. Now he has drafted a plan to appoint an independent Uplokayukta for the BMC (an ombudsman to handle the public’s complaints about corruption) and a committee comprising retired bureaucrats Sharad Kale, Gautam Chaterjee and Ramanath Zha to advise him on introducing transparency.