A day ahead of the Lok Sabha results, leader of the Opposition and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge urged the bureaucrats to adhere to the Constitution and work without “fear, favour and ill-will against anybody.”
Amid speculations that Union Home Amit Shah has been holding meetings with the IAS officers, allegedly in a bid to manipulate the results, Kharge on June 3 said that under the BJP rule since 2014, there has been a systemic pattern to assault, undermine and suppress our autonomous institutions by the ruling party.
“India’s Democratic ethos are being consequently damaged. There is a widespread tendency to turn India into a regimental dictatorship. We are increasingly seeing some institutions shedding their independence and brazenly following the diktats of the ruling party. Some have completely adopted their style of communication, their way of functioning, and in some cases even their political rhetoric.”
Kharge said that with brute power, threat, coercive mechanisms and misuse of agencies, this tendency to bow to the powers that have become a way for their short-term survival. He alleged that India’s Constitution and Democracy have become a casualty in this denigration.
Urging the bureaucrats to uphold the constitution and work without any fear or intimidation, Kharge wrote, “Independence of the institutions is paramount, for every civil servant takes oath of the Constitution that they “will faithfully and conscientiously discharge their duties and will do right to all manner of people in accordance with the Constitution and the law, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”.”
He added, “In this spirit we expect every bureaucrat and officer – from top to bottom of the hierarchy, to discharge their duties in the spirit of the Constitution, without any coercion, threat, pressure or intimidation either from the ruling party/coalition or from the opposition party/coalition.”
He said that the ‘Will of the People’ is supreme, and people want Indian bureaucracy to return back to the same ‘Steel frame of India’ envisaged by Sardar Patel.