Senior Secretaries, media not invited to Raj Bhawan function

     Raipur, September 5, 2009: Most of the senior bureaucrats, including the Commissioner Public Relations of the Government of Chhattisgarh, were today not invited to a function of the Raj Bhawan to honour the teachers in the hand of Governor ESL Narasimhan.

     Media was also kept out of Raj Bhawan function and senior officials, including Principal Secretary Finance Ajay Singh and Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister N Baijendra Kumar were not at all invited to the function when Governor Narasimhan and Chief Minister Dr Raman Singh were honouring the teachers on the Teacher’s day.

     However, when contacted Education Secretary Nand Kumar casually remarked he was not handling the invitation things so he should not be held responsible.

     Officials told ChhattisgarhTopNews.Com that the function was to take place in a 300 capacity hall and the Education Department had been asked to issue invitations accordingly and as a part of that the Department was only ready to issue 20 invitations to the media.

    When the Public Relations Department got to know that only 20 invitation cards had been marked for the media, the PR officials refused to accept that saying they needed at least 130 cards as they cannot discriminate among the media organisations in extending invitation.

     And in the way, the entire media was left out from any invitation. Without any proper card when some mediapersons try to enter the Raj Bhawan they were denied entry by the staff of the Governor, journalists complaint.

    When the issue was brought to the notice of Commissioner PR Baijendra Kumar, he said “what can I say on the matter, when I had not been invited to the Raj Bhawan function”.

     When confronted, Secretary Education Nand Kumar said “The PR Department had asked for 300 cards and we were not in a position to give so many for the media as it was a function in Raj Bhawan”.      “However, I am not aware of not sending any invitation to the Principal Secretary Finance or Public Relations. The invitation matter was handled by Director Public Instructions K R Pisda,” Nand Kumar said while refusing to take any responsibility for the mismanagement.