Top bureaucrats in Uttar Pradesh are jittery as chief minister Mayawati will undertake a state-wide tour from Tuesday to assess first-hand the ground reality of development schemes.
This is the first time the Dalit leader has set out on such a mission since she took power in May 2007. Her tour assumes significance in view of the UP assembly elections due next May.
Officials in the CM’s secretariat are tight-lipped over the tour. In fact, many of them are at sea about what the leader has in mind. Sources said Mayawati’s itinerary has been kept confidential to keep district officers on their toes.
“The truth is no one knows where the CM would ask her helicopter to be landed. We might get to know only tomorrow [Tuesday] morning a couple of hours before the actual take-off,” a senior official said.
Officials who have been at the receiving end of Mayawati’s ire would vouch that once she senses things have gone astray, especially with schemes she has planned and floated, there is no knowing what she would stop at. “The CM has already made it clear that punishment to non-performing officers would be handed out on the spot. It could be a transfer, suspension or an adverse entry in the officer’s annual record,” a senior official said.
The Kanshi Ram Ji Urban Housing Scheme, about which there have been media reports alleging sub-standard work, is one of the schemes close to the Dalit leader’s heart.
She is understood to have done homework well before setting out on the tour and apparently under a well-thought strategy she will criss-cross the state over the next fortnight.
In the first phase she is expected to cover 10 districts over a week.
