Shimla: Former CPI-M Central Committee member and State Party Secretary Rakesh Singha has shot off a letter to the State Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh for allowing the humiliation of the first citizen of the town in his presence. Mr. Singha who was also a former Shimla MLA has pointed out that Shimla’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor who belongs to CPI-M are subjected to repeated humiliation and were not even offered chairs in a public function presided over by the Chief Minister in a capital suburb on Monday.
The Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Shimla preferred leaving a public municipal function when the chairs meant for them were occupied by some other people as soon as the Chief Minister came to attend a local function.
In a strongly worded letter he wrote that a protocol is followed in a parliamentary democracy in all public functions that involves public money since the times of first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru in independent India. The Congress or BJP who are in power in the State or at Centre are not suppose to covert the public functions into political functions of the cadres, he reminded.
Mr. Singha complained that the first citizens of the town were slighted in Chief Minister’s presence and he tried to overlook the protocol and allowed the Congress workers to overpower the hosts in a Municipal Corporation function arranged for the general public. He said a Chief Minister, once elected, is a representative of all citizens whether they had voted for his party or not. It is against the social and democratic culture to disgrace the elected representatives of other parties, he rued.
Demanding an enquiry into the episode the senior CPI-M leader who called it an erosion in the ethics of parliamentary democracy said that such wrong trends should be rectified and not repeated in the future.
A number of BJP incumbent MLAs have also made a similar complaint of getting the protocol flouted whenever the Chief Minister come to their constituencies or announces the new schemes in their areas. Some of the opposition MLAs have even been turned out from the stage in the presence of Mr. Virbhadra Singh in the past from various public functions. BJP MLAs Mahinder Singh, Sarveen Chowdhary and Randhir Sharma have made similar complaints in the past.
KY Singh is a political observer and a senior journalist with an interest in a diverse set of issues related to Himachal Pradesh and other mountain states. He lives in Shimla.
