Governance picks up pace with flurry of orders in Uttar Pradesh before polls

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Governance has picked up pace with a flurry of orders clearing pending work in Uttar Pradesh and beating Election Commission of India’s model code of conduct amid a spree of public rallies, inaugurations and laying of foundation stones every day ahead of the assembly elections.

The motto that “closer the elections faster the work” appears to have worked well in the state over the years and the current situation is no different.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and chief minister Yogi Adityanath take part in various ceremonies to inaugurate or lay the foundation stones of projects ahead of polls, various state government departments are busy issuing government orders (GOs) on a number of issues.

A close scrutiny of GOs issued in the past four years indicates that the most orders have been issued in 2021, the last full year of the BJP government’s current tenure with elections due early this year. Most of the government orders of 2021 have been issued in the last quarter of the calendar year making faster decision making in the last three months obvious.

The Uttar Pradesh government issued 13,141 GOs in 2021 against 12,916 in 2018, 10,058 in 2019 and 10,779 in 2020. A break-up indicates the maximum work in the last three months of 2021 when 3514 GOs were issued against 2131 during the same period in 2017, 2647 in 2018, 2033 in 2019 and 2754 in 2020.

The number of GOs issued was the highest in the last month every year with 1553 GOs in December 2021, 759 in the last month of 2017, 868, 655 and 1144 in the same month in 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively.

“Yes, when elections come near, the pending issues are resolved. Use of the annual budget is low in the first three months and the most funds are used in the last three months every year. But this is more so in an election year,” agreed Alok Ranjan, former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary.

Ranjan further said this should, however, not be done.

“There should be uniformity in work all across the year be it an election year or otherwise,” he said.

This becomes more evident when the Election Commission of India is about to announce its model code of conduct for any election. About 326 GOs have been already issued in the first eight days of 2022 at the time of filing of this report and more may come as the day progresses. The state cabinet has also approved a large number of decisions at least thrice this month in an obvious bid to beat the ECI’s model of code of conduct. The state cabinet’s decision included restoration of secretariat allowance to its employees working in secretariat and other higher offices and reducing rate of Value Added Tax on Aviation Turbine Fuel from 21 per cent to one per cent.)

“Yes, issues remain pending for years. The decisions are made at the last minute and GOs are issued at a faster pace to beat the ECI’s model conduct and woo voters. This should not be done and there should not be any pendency at any stage,” said VP Mishra, national president of the Indian Public Service Employees’ Federation.

Does the last-minute work help any political party or government?

“Public memory is very short. So, the ruling parties always try to take advantage of this and decide to go for last minute decision making and the higher number of GOs issued in the last year, quarter or month reflects this,” said Professor SK Dwivedi, the former head of the department of political science, Lucknow University.


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