Following PM’s Template: Fadnavis To Restrict Public Access To Mantralaya

Access to Mantralaya, Maharashtra’s state secretariat, is scheduled to get tighter in Devendra Fadnavis regime 2.0. Glass flap barrier gates are being installed at various entrances to control access of visitors along with introduction of RFID and facial recognition access in high-security zones at Mantralaya. State BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankhule has already written to his party cadres to coordinate with ministers through liaison officials, who will be sitting at the BJP office. The BJP ministers too have also been asked to hold weekly or fortnightly janata durbars at the party office. Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party too are expected to follow suit and facilitate a similar policy for their party workers from their party offices. The idea is to reduce footfalls at Mantralaya as also to rein in middle-men, who tend to approach ministers for favours like transfers of officials or to bag contracts. Ajit Pawar has already asked his cadres to not seek transfers of officials or contracts, particularly if they are going to sub-contract the work to others. Maharashtra’s earlier chief minister Eknath Shinde prided on being known as a common man’s CM and believed in open access attracting huge delegations of party workers flocking to him at Mantralaya regularly. The legislative assembly sessions under Shinde were known to be particularly crowded with ministers complaining of not even being able to walk properly in the crowded corridors of Vidhan Bhavan. Since Fadnavis’ taking over, he has first shifted the CM’s public relations officials on the lower fifth floor, already truncating access of journalists to the CM’s office. Looks like Fadnavis has taken a leaf out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s playbook.