What
should a PS to Chief Minister accomplish, when he is being hounded by the CM’s
acolytes and party appointed government officials. It’s a tricky situation for
an officer who is working on the most coveted post of the state. There
is, indeed, a PS to CM who is smart, intelligent, vibrant but most of the
time upset and worried, though he has the confidence of the CM but the party
cadre and parent organisation of the party workers keep hounding him. The PS to
CM needs privacy as his work is very delicate and he has to clear hundreds of
files in a day. The PS is the Man Friday of any state chief minister and is
mostly an IAS officer barring some exceptions. His words and orders are
considered to be the orders of the chief minister. In fact, after the Chief
Ministers’ room or home, the maximum number of visitors can be seen outside the
office of the PS to CM. The said PS to CM of a north Indian state is grappling
with many problems as the Chief Minister is new to the administrative setup.
The political appointees in the Chief Ministers’ Secretariat are novices but
they are politically shrewd. The CM desires to control the state with the help
of the political appointees. To facilitate this, the CM has got allocated
a house adjacent to his official residence and made arrangements for all
politically appointed officials to operate from the said house. So the poor PS
to CM has to tolerate political appointees in his office room most of the time.
The Chief Minister seems to be forgetting that the system works on the trust
and if the PS does not have the trust of the CM, the message goes down the line
diluting the authority of the government. g
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