But is the Board serious about feedback?

By Vijay Kumar

The Board has published these draft circulars yesterday and they want the public’s comments by 29^th June. They plan to make these effective from 1.7.2007, which is incidentally a Sunday (may be they didn’t realize this!) Now they have given ten days time to the stakeholders to send in their comments. As for departmental officers the draft circular will not reach half the offices in the country by 1^st July.

Let’s see the time frame. Assume the draft circulars have reached the Chief Commissioners yesterday and they had seen them yesterday and had called for comments from the Commissioners to reach them by 27^th June. This will reach the Commissioners on 21^st June. The Commissioners, assuming they are pretty fast will send it to the Divisions by 22^nd asking for comments by 25^th. 22^nd is a Friday and the Divisional officers will send a letter to the Ranges asking for comments on 25^th. This will reach the Ranges on 25^th or 26^th and assuming they are fast and have nothing better to do than reading 30 pages of the circulars and then commenting on them, they will prepare their comments by 28^th and dispatch it to the Division by 2.7.2007. The Division will take at least two days to compile the data and they will send their report to the Commissioner by 5.7.2007. If the Commissioner also takes two days (actually he will take more) to compile, his report will go on 6^th July. The Chief Commissioner will get it on 9^th July and may possibly send his comments by 11^th July – all this if there are no meetings, urgent reports, inspections, protocol and a host of other activities which keep the babus busy.

By this time the Board would have already issued the circulars and nobody is going to read the comments collected from the field.

If this is the situation as far as departmental officers’ comments are concerned, what would be the fate of comments from the public?

If the Board is not serious about considering public comments, why ask them at all?