Puducherry: Puducherry welfare and labour minister M Kandasamy accused Lt Governor Kiran Bedi of functioning with a ‘deliberate motive to cause discredit and disrepute to the Narayanasamy- led Congress government’ in the Union Territory.
“The constant criticism raised by the Lt Governor through social media is inclined to discredit the government and also officials on various administrative matters. Ms Bedi is doing the same right from the day she assumed the office of the Lt Governor,” said Kandasamy while addressing mediapersons here on Saturday.
The Lt Governor had raised the issue of default in remittances of the Employees Provident Fund by various government owned undertakings and cooperative societies to the tune of Rs 36.23 crore.
In a reply to the Governor, parliamentary secretary to the Chief Minister K. Lakshminarayanan explained that default in remittances of PF had happened during the previous regimes and this government has no role at all in this default.
“I have asked the labour commissioner to get into the issue and also send circulars to all undertakings that had defaulted remittances of the PF to the employees’ accounts and also to pay the PF,” the minister said.
Payment of PF fund is the legal obligation of managements and is an issue between them and the EPFO and the government has no role at all, said Mr Kandasamy.
The minister alleged that all files sent to the Governor by the ministry for approval were gathering dust in Raj Nivas.
He asked the governor to work in tandem with the government instead of adopting a negative stand. The turf war between the Lt Governor and the government intensified recently after a municipal commissioner was transferred and kept under compulsory wait through an order of the chief secretary on March 30.
Bedi overruled the order, issued in compliance with the ruling of the Speaker in the Assembly, by making it ‘invalid’. Legislators, political parties in the Union Territory raised severe criticism against the Lt Governor’s ‘style of functioning’.
