Aurangabad: A civic official in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad city, who went to greet the new municipal commissioner on taking charge on Monday, ended up receiving a Rs 5,000 fine as his welcome bouquet had plastic wrapping.
Indian Administrative Service officer Astik Kumar Pandey took charge as Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) commissioner and head of the civic body’s urban development department chief, Ramchandra Mahajan, was one of the many colleagues who came to wish him good luck.
“However, the flower bouquet that Mahajan gave the commissioner had plastic wrapping at the base. Pandey asked his officials from the Solid Waste Management department to recover a fine of Rs 5,000 from Mahajan on the spot,” said an official.
The fine receipt was widely circulated on social media later.
Pandey was unavailable for comments despite repeated attempts.
Government offices across the country have been making efforts to ban single-use plastic items from their premises after a call for their elimination was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech this year.
In June last year, the Maharashtra government imposed a ban on a variety of plastic products, including single-use disposable items, and started penalising all those found using them.
It banned manufacturing, use, sale, distribution and storage of plastic materials such as bags, spoons, plates and other disposable items. The ban also included packaging material and thermocol.
Also read: India’s biggest packaging company sees profits in govt plan to cut plastics
Another publicity stunt by IAS. There is lot of plastic in this country in the form of political interference and currption can you also fine and remove it.
Please do not do the publicity stunts there are no takers for this.
FLOWERS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN NEEDED, IF THERE WERE NOT ALL THESE ‘COMING AND GOINGS’ OF IAS OFFICERS
Beside officers on taking charge should get down to work pronto.
The receiving of flowers is nonsense, these may be given once in a career on retirement like most countries, which are not banana republics or failed to reform ex colonies.
This frequent transfer from department to department must stop.
An IAS Officer must be permanently posted to a department and there he must remain, through his career gaining experience, expertise and taking responsibility for long term outcomes.
An IAS Officer at present is expected to be a jack of all trades, and he is here today gone tomorrow.
The colonial days are long gone when the white man ICS ruled a native people, the administrator was the great English Barra Sahib amateur educated ‘back home’ in a English public school.
Sardar Patel insisted on keeping this service on Independence, he ignored that it was flawed and not fit for purpose in a free country, where the local representatives of the people appointed the local administration, in a local democracy like in the British county council system or the systems in Europe and America.
If I am asked if there is one thing that has kept INDIA back, I would say it is our colonial IAS and IPS services.
Astik Kumar was collector of my city for 4 years and before we had G. Shrikant. My City always got best collectors. Works were incredible. Felt good to see him in news back once again.
There are gentler, equally effective ways of conveying a message. This approach may work with official colleagues, will hit a brick wall with elected corporators. Especially those from the Shiv Sena …