Uttar Pradesh Bureaucracy Reads Meaning Into Yogi Adityanath's Remark on Formalities

A remark by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is being widely discussed in bureaucratic circles, and officers are trying to work out whom it was aimed at. He made the comment while addressing a programme in Lucknow, where he criticised the practice of unnecessary formalities.

The talk in the secretariat is that he was referring to Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Sanjay Prasad, over a formal phone call made to former DGP Prakash Singh. That is the reported reading. The Chief Minister did not name an officer in the account that reached this desk.

Prakash Singh is a former Director General of Police of Uttar Pradesh and a former Director General of the Border Security Force. He was also the petitioner in the case that led to the Supreme Court's 2006 directions on police reforms, which makes him one of the best-known retired police officers in the country.

According to the account, the Chief Minister said that it is because of such formalities that officers end up in the dock. He asked that the formalities be dropped and that programmes be held with full preparation. He added that whenever a person tries to take a shortcut, it leads to decline and not to progress, and that it brings the person a crisis of identity.

The Additional Chief Secretary (Home) is the senior-most civil servant in the Home Department, which handles the police, law and order and prisons. Any remark seen as pointed at that post draws immediate attention in Lucknow, since the Home Department works most closely with the Chief Minister's office.

The remark was made at a programme in Lucknow, and no official clarification has followed.