The recently order of the Himachal Pradesh High Court to end the practice of transfers on the basis of Political DO notes is a long needed rap to the Government of Himachal Pradesh. If implemented in letter and spirit, which we hope that this strong nudge from High Court should now ensure, it will end decades of chaos , arbitrariness and a serious source of al- leged political corruption in the state.The High Court has ruled that transfers of government employees on extraneous ground by abuse of “artificial empowerment “ has chocked the Courts as well as governance. The High Court restrained the state government from transferring the government employees on extraneous basis. Though the Himachal Government had been harping on its own model of “ Good Governance “, the reality is that the state had been made hollow over the years by contractors of transfers, who had no other business but to get “ DO notes” approved by the authorities.The small cadre of higher bureaucracy of Himachal Pradesh, that was seen crawling before the Ministers , who had little interest in governance and would spend their entire energies in transfers.
The senior bureaucracy of the state in fact spends most of its time in sorting the humongous DO notes rather than developmental programmes.This had been a bane of Himachal Pradesh that is other wise a state which can do wonders.One can just hope that now there will not be a conspiracy of silence and “ you scratch my back “ kind of a bonhomie and this menance will atleast be controlled. Infact the high court had gone a step further and rapped the system of the election losers who used these illegal DO notes to browbeat, intimidate and extort the small time public servants. Flaunting their closeness to the powers that be, they wrecked havoc to the ethos of the Dev Bhoomi Himachal. The entire state knows how they have oper-ated in recent times as tyrannous unelected non state actors.Himachal would hopefully usher in a new era with the intervention of the High Court that is a sentinel of the solemn promise made to We the People.