Delhi’s bureaucrats have apparently been given a reminder that should need no circular: when Chief Minister Rekha Gupta calls a meeting, it is meant to count. The Delhi government has instructed senior officers to prioritise meetings convened by the chief minister and ensure that decisions taken at meetings with the Centre and the Lieutenant Governor reach her office. The nudge followed concerns that some senior officers had failed to attend meetings chaired by her.
In Delhi, where the elected government, the Lieutenant Governor and the Centre share an unusually complicated administrative space, a meeting is never quite just a meeting. Who attends, who stays away and who gets briefed afterwards can become questions of authority in their own right.
The message to the babus is unmistakable: the diary is not a suggestion box. And if the chief minister’s meeting is on it, the bureaucracy might want to check its priorities before checking its calendar.
