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'I mean business'

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Accommodation for all.

Sorry, read that as berths for as many as possible.

The scene -- you guessed right! -- is the troubled state of Uttar Pradesh. The new Chief Minister Ram Prakash Gupta, having failed in his primary task of striking a rapprochement between the warring Bharatiya Janata Party factions, is doing the next possible thing to survive in power:

An expansion of his council of ministers, which may soon be the same jumbo size as that of his predecessor.

Admitting that a major expansion was inevitable, the 76-year-old Gupta told rediff.com that he would effect the expansion on Tuesday. He confessed that under the circumstances, he would not have a free hand in the exercise.

"I will be in Delhi on Monday afternoon to have detailed discussions with the party leaders including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who would be returning from Durban on Tuesday. I will go in for expansion thereafter," he said.

Would he, in keeping with the demand of partymen, remove the past imbalance in the distribution of portfolios?

"I do not wish to do anything in haste. In any case this decision will be taken after consultation with the party leadership," he replied.

The chief minister agreed that the concentration of major dual portfolios with a handful of ministers during the Kalyan Singh regime was responsible for a lot of heartburn among many. But he appears as helpless as his predecessor in remedying it.

While there were many in the 93-member ousted Kalyan ministry without even a full-fledged department under them, a chosen few were clutching two key ministries. Thus, if Kalyan's close confidante Om Prakash Singh was reaping his harvest with the charge of departments like irrigation and cane development and sugar industry, his arch adversary Kalraj Misra, who discreetly headed the tirade against the former CM, was in charge of the state's most lucrative ministry, public works and tourism. Lalji Tandon, who had access to Vajpayee, continues as the minister for both housing and urban development.

Making it clear that his mission was to restore bonhomie within the party, Gupta remarked: "I feel it is important to give everyone a chance and I am sure that everyone will soon realise how important it is for us to remain united and open."

The new chief minister was not in favour of any strong economic measures to improve the state's ailing economy. "I would not be in favour of imposing fresh levies and thereby burdening the people, he said. "I would rather lay greater emphasis on improving the realisation of existing taxes and on curbing the large-scale pilferage in the process."

"I firmly believe that people wish to pay taxes," he continued. "But it is the officials who demand their pound of flesh, thereby not only jeopardising the realisations but also causing avoidable harassment to the common people."

Gupta, however, said that he would not take immediate punitive action against those responsible. "Let me first put things on the track, then I would initiate action against the undeserving and corrupt," he said. "But let that not send wrong signals. I mean business and my decisions will be strictly based on performance."

Speaking about the bureaucracy, Gupta said he would effect a large-scale administrative reshuffle. "But I do not wish to do it immediately," he clarified. "You see, I have no biases of any kind. I do not know about the working of any of them as I have been away from the government for more than two decades. Therefore I would first prefer to assess their performance and then pick up those with doubtless integrity and a missionary zeal for key jobs."

He firmly believed that not only law and order but people's problems too could be attended to much more effectively "with the desired change in the attitude of the bureaucracy."

So what does the new CM consider his greatest access?

"Accessibility," came the answer, "I have lived like a commoner all these years, so I am familiar with the problems of the ordinary people. Therefore I have decided to make myself available to all and sundry every morning between 0900 hours and 1100 hours at my official residence."

This follows his decision to do away with the traditional weekly 'Janta durbar' or 'Janta darshan' practised by successive heads of governments. "I am not a raja that I should call my meeting with people a durbar or darshan; both smack of some kind of feudalism," he explained. "So I have decided to meet the people on all weekdays."

As if to assuage the feelings of public representatives who felt hurt because of his predecessor's alleged "inaccessibility" and "arrogance," the new incumbent has decided to throw open his doors to them every evening between 1700 hours and 1900 hours.

The BJP leader is confident of evolving a new culture of governance through these steps, which he hopes will go a long way in promoting consensus among members of the multiparty coalition that he heads and establish an atmosphere of congeniality within the badly fractured BJP.

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