SHILLONG: If the reputation of the Shillong Raj Bhavan is tarnished, outgoing Governor V Shanmuganathan is not the only one to be blamed. The State Government too is culpable in not being able to prevent the series of events leading to this disgrace of the office of Governor.
A retired civil servant said, “The tendency to abuse the office of governor could have been prevented by a responsible and senior IAS officer. When outgoing Governor Shanmuganathan wanted the transfer of MS Rao, a senior and experienced bureaucrat of the rank of Principal Secretary, the Government should have exercised due diligence and deputed someone equally senior and experienced. Instead the Government sent a fairly junior officer who came up from the ranks. This makes the Government a partner in crime.”
Many senior officers who have served as Secretary to the Governor feel that a no-nonsense officer would have been able to not only advise the Governor but also insisted on abandoning his fanciful proclivities to appoint women staff or to arbitrarily transfer lady staff from the Raj Bhavan Secretariat to the residential section.
There is a strong feeling that the Chief Secretary could have put his foot down when there was political pressure to appoint a promoted officer (whose political ambitions for allegedly contesting the next elections from Mawsynram constituency are very well known), to act as secretary to the Governor since he is also holding several important responsibilities.
But the Chief Secretary succumbed to pressure and so the responsibility for all that happened in the Raj Bhavan must be shared by the Government, they felt.
Raj Bhavan staff say that the present Secretary to the Governor does not reside on the Raj Bhavan premises like all incumbents do. He is not around to attend to day to day responsibilities and to address staff issues. When the staff drew his attention to the unsavoury goings-on in the Raj Bhavan, the officer is said to have told then, “You have to adjust and adapt.”
Sources in the Raj Bhavan say that the Secretary to the Governor could have put a stop to the appointment of PRO since those were beyond the privileges of the governor. Shanmuganathan appointed his own cook, personal assistant and private secretary which are well within his brief. But the appointment of PROs was, they felt a superfluous exercise but the Secretary went along with this and almost facilitated it.
Senior IAS officers are experienced in the art of saying ‘no’ without offence.They are careful about keeping a strict balance between protocol and privilege.
“The Governor is a constitutional head paid out of the public exchequer. The amount spent must be justified,” a retired officer quipped.
Raj Bhavan sources further claimed that the private dining room of the Governor, which was tastefully done up by the two former first ladies and finds mention in the book “From the Residency to the Raj,” by Prof Imdad Hussain and has a lot of history attached to it was suddenly converted into the office of the Secretary, under Shanmuganathan.
This they felt was the desecration of the rich history of the Shillong Raj Bhavan. And all these have happened in the last three to four months under the present Secretary.
Some bureaucrats have in fact remarked that the bureaucracy should be the bulwark against all wrongdoings whether in the Raj Bhavan or in the Government. They rued that this is fast losing ground and that some officers have today openly collude with politicians in wrongdoings.
