Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who has worked from home for most of the 28 months he has been in power, was back in his office at the state secretariat, Mantralaya, for the first time in nearly two years Wednesday (barring the odd visit when he wasn’t doing routine work).
Dressed in a blue-and-white kurta pyjama, and wearing a face mask, the first thing he did after entering the state government’s headquarters was offer flowers and bow before the portraits of the Maratha warrior-king Chhatrapati Shivaji and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
He also visited an exhibition chronicling the life of Dr Ambedkar, organised in the foyer of the secretariat’s main building, and dropped in at various departments, where he interacted with government employees. The Maharashtra CM’s official Twitter handle posted pictures of the visit.
CM Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray interacting with the Mantralaya staff from various departments pic.twitter.com/hgr0Eh8fkY
— CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) April 13, 2022
“We sincerely welcome the honourable CM who visited Mantralaya and interacted with employees. It is a very good sign and it encourages employees to be more productive,” G.D. Kulthe, chief advisor of the Maharashtra Gazetted Officers’ Federation, told ThePrint.
“In the last two years, though he wasn’t visiting Mantralaya, all work was being sincerely done from ‘Varsha’ (the CM’s official residence). Though employees were not able to meet him directly, there was interaction with heads of departments who were in liaison with the CM on a day-to-day basis,” he added.
An exception was when the CM visited the disaster control room at Mantralaya in 2021 during the floods in the Konkan region.
In an interview with Loksatta editor-in-chief Girish Kuber in February, CM Thackeray had expressed his intention of working out of Mantralaya more often. “The elephant is gone, only the tail is left,” he said, referring to how he had almost recovered after his surgery.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar, known as the architect of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) — the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance that rules the state — let out a surprised smile at a press conference in Mumbai when reporters asked him about Thackeray’s presence in Mantralaya Wednesday.
“Aaj aale ahet ka? Arre wah (Did he go today? That’s great),” Pawar said, before going on to say that the CM’s absence from Mantralaya did not hamper the state’s administration.
“I have seen in many states that a lot of times, CMs take decisions from home. The secretariat is at home. And as such, we have a secretariat at ‘Varsha’. And so, whether he comes or not, the state government’s functioning has not stopped. Files are being cleared, decisions are being taken, and so I’m not concerned about it,” the NCP chief continued.
“There were some limitations on him due to his health. It looks like they have reduced. He has come (to Mantralaya), I’m happy,” Pawar added.
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‘Work from home’ until now
So far, Thackeray has had a style of working that sets him apart from most of his predecessors. The Shiv Sena president, who is Maharashtra’s 19th chief minister, has almost never sat in his sixth-floor office at Mantralaya, and operates from his residence ‘Varsha’, or from ‘Sahyadri’, the state’s official guest house, located just a kilometre away, in plush Malabar Hill. He is also seen less on the field compared to many former chief ministers, and mostly attends meetings and events via video conferencing.
The CM adopted this style of functioning in March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, mainly as a precautionary measure. However, the remote working continued due to his poor health. In November last year, Thackeray, who is known to have multiple stents in his heart, underwent a cervical spine surgery.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had severely criticised the ‘work from home’ culture, but Thackeray was strongly backed by his colleagues from the MVA. A senior IAS officer posted at Mantralaya had earlier told ThePrint that while having face time with the CM is vital, governance has not suffered.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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