The politically motivated decision to keep in abeyance the transfers of those 23 Civil Service Officers is absolutely highhanded and unwarranted. It is only the Goa Service Board headed by the Chief Secretary and not the Ministers that should be deciding on postings and transfers of officers.
Sadly, gone are the days when Ministers would seek and heed the expert advice given by officers. Today those in Power want the entire bureaucracy to mutely tow their line, while officers who dare to speak their mind are sidelined and dispatched into wilderness.
The bureaucrats have to be allowed to function in accordance with law and be able to apply their experience and expertise independent of political interference or pressure. Officers cannot be forced and coerced to act as caged parrots.
Ministers and ruling MLAs have gone to the extent of even appropriating the power to select Police officials of their choice in their constituencies while depriving the Police Establishment Board its rightful authority and reducing it to a mere rubber stamp.
Our Supreme Court some years ago had very rightly observed that governance would not have faced a chaotic situation had the bureaucracy not allowed itself – the “steel frame” of the state – to be rusted.
In Goa this steel frame has rusted beyond recognition. We lack a neutral bureaucracy. What we are seeing is an utterly rusted frame, which has been mangled and twisted while it’s very backbone languishing in administrative impotence.
