Working Sunday for babus in Bangalore to clear pending files

Bangalore, Karnataka: It was a working Sunday for several bureaucrats at the state secretariat here as they sifted through pending files to clear them, following concerns expressed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently over pileup of files across departments.

"This is a drive, this is not a new thing, we have been launching such drives...," state Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee told reporters here.

It was to set "our own house in order" and the exercise was aimed at seeing that files, which were unnecessarily lying on table unattended and also the reactions to peoples requests do not get late, he said.

"We have not called everybody; we have called in the departments with highest pendency that is my department DPAR, finance department, urban development, revenue department," he added.

At a recent cabinet meeting, Siddaramaiah had expressed concern over a pileup of around two lakh files, across departments and asked the Chief Secretary to oversee their clearance and report to him.

Stating that this drive was to clear files that were pending without disposal, Mukherjee said "....our aim is to clear 50,000 files in three to four days, till yesterday

30,000 files were cleared, today public won't be there so we aim to clear about 50,000 files."

"We should see how many of those files are of public interest, because many files are pending with court cases, many have to return after referring to the other departments....," he added.

Mukherjee also said that he has planned for a random check of files tomorrow and if anything was unattended beyond 48 hours serious action will be initiated.