SHILLONG, MAR 13: GNC legislator Clifford R Marak expressed his reservation over the decision of the state government to provide ‘red beacons’ to top bureaucrats while sidelining the elected legislators from its purview.
Moving his motion on the red beacons provided to chairperson of MPSC and chief secretary on Thursday, Marak questioned whether elected legislators are below the rank of the chief secretary and other bureaucrats.
Marak however said, “If am not wrong the warrant of precedence is that chief secretary is below the rank of an MLA.” He sarcastically said, “Am sorry, if this is the case, then why the chief secretary and additional chief secretary and other bureaucrats are not elevated as “Join Chief Ministers”.”
Marak said, “If you give red light beacons to them, then from tomorrow I’ll start addressing the chief secretary and additional chief secretary as “Sir.”
Expressing humiliation over the decision, Marak said that let the chief secretary and chairperson of MPSC take oath because the Governor has occupy the office after taking an oath. According to him, as per rule, unless taken oath, nobody is not allowed to use red light beacon.
Citing deprivation of such an important facility to elected representative, Marak complaint, “Sometimes I am late to reach the Assembly session because there are no security provided to us and it is also very unfortunate that when MLAs (particularly those not in ruling) visit the Meghalaya house in Kolkata, Delhi and others, we are not being respected by the officials over there.”
Marak accused the Congress led government for working under the bureaucrats. He wondered, “I don’t know what is wrong with this state government. It seems they (ministers) are under the bureaucrats.”
Earlier, Speaker AT Mondal had to intervene when Marak expressed his dissatisfaction to the reply given by state transport minister HDR Lyngdoh, who challenge the GNC legislator to go to court. The speaker directed the state government to examine whether MLAs can use red beacons or not.
In his reply, Lyngdoh had informed that the transport department had consulted the law department regarding the dignitaries of the state government that are entitled to use the red light and the notification was issued on March 7.
According to Lyngdoh, the Supreme Court in its order on December 10, last year had directed that only constitutional and high dignitaries are entitled to use red light on the top front of their official vehicles.
Lyngdoh clarified, “The chairman of the MPSC is a constitutional functionary as per article 316 of the Constitution of India and it is very specific while chief secretary is entitled to use red light because he is also the cabinet secretary.”
On the warrant of precedent, Lyngdoh said, “It provides therein the combined of constitutional functionaries and non-constitutional functionaries and therefore all who are put in the warrant of precedent cannot be allowed to use red beacon light in their official vehicles.”
Stating that government is implementing the order of Supreme Court only, Lyngdoh said if any person is aggrieved by the order of the apex court, he or she should seek relief from the Supreme Court only by way of petition.
Supreme Court had specifically directed that the word ‘high dignitaries’ cannot be expanded by any authority in India, Lyngdoh added.- By Our Reporter
+ There are no comments
Add yours