Mohan Majhi Govt Erases Draconian 5T and Mo Sarkar Initiatives of Naveen Patnaik Era

BHUBANESWAR: The BJP government in Odisha on Wednesday took a bold step to erase the previous Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) administration’s “draconian” and “illegal administrative” tools kike 5T and Mo Sarkar.

The acronym 5T stands for Teamwork, Transparency, Technology, Time, and Transformation. In 2019, the then chief minister Naveen Patnaik had created this governance model and appointed his most trusted bureaucrat V Karthikeyan Pandian as its secretary. This model helped Pandian to put all other secretaries under his control and gave him the unbridled authority to interfere in the affairs of all other wings of the state governance system.

Also in the same year, 2019; Naveen had created the ‘Mo Sarkar’ system with an aim to provide “service with dignity to people who are coming to government offices for different purposes.” It was then decided that the phone numbers of people who are coming to government offices will be collected randomly and they would be called back to collect feedback on the behavior and professionalism of government officers. The employees will be ranked as good or bad on the basis of the feedback received.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress, which were then in the opposition in the Odisha Legislative Assembly, had questioned the legality of the two initiatives. They went on to allege that the two initiatives were deliberately created to undermine the authority of the ministers and make the senior bureaucrats subservient to V Karthikeyan Pandian.

As per the notification issued by the general administration and public grievance department, there is no longer a need for such a mechanism for the evaluation of the Annual Performance Appraisal Report (PAR) and Annual Confidence Character Rolls (CCR) of government employees in Group A, B and C.

The previous BJD government ordered for the implementation of the “5T Charter” and “Mo Sarkar” initiative in the Annual Performance Appraisal Report (PAR). Subsequently, weightage was given to the performance of government employees in the implementation of 5T components earlier.

As per the latest notification issued by the Odisha government, the format which was in place prior to 2019-20 will now be implemented.