Power Minister Milind Naik has turned out to be a problem child of the Laxmikant Parsekar government. In a series of stories Herald has published – and will continue to do so, as more information is gathered – the supreme power wielded by Power Minister Milind Naik is for all to see. And for some to sense. Especially those who have been victimised by his adamant decisions, of not sanctioning much needed power loads, or not issuing appointment letters to those executive engineers whose recruitment has been cleared by the Chief Minister. Let us look at some of decisions where the Power Minister decided not to decide.
Around 23 files of commercial power connections have been kept pending without any valid reason for more than two years. Applicants whose power connections or additional power load sanctioned are blocked include Reliance, MRF, Funskool and others. Some of these applicants have questioned government’s intentions of attracting industries to Goa when an atmosphere of file blocking prevails.
Moreover, Power Minister Milind Naik has overruled Chief Minister Parsekar’s decision on appointment of Executive Engineers in the Electricity Department and has been holding on to the file for the last few months. The Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC) had initiated the process of appointment of seven Executive Engineers, on July 2014 and cleared their appointments on November 28, 2014, a year ago. As we have consistently reported these appointments have been illegally blocked by Power Minister Naik, who called for the file in which the CM had cleared the appointments and literally captured it. This has been done despite a dire need for professional engineers in the electricity department.
At the same time, he has pushed for controversial handpicked people who have retired to fill some key positions. For example he demanded that former controversial Chief Electrical Engineer S Lekshamanan be appointed as Electrical Inspector because, according to him, “the post of Electrical Inspector is vacant from last one year as a result the statutory functions of the inspectorate are not being attended”.
Naik, therefore runs the department, pretty much the way he feels like. Imagine a single minister in this government who can call for a file cleared by the Chief Minister, verbally, and refuse to execute a direction of the Chief Minister, just because he doesn’t want professional appointments cleared by the Goa Public Service Commission to go through, due to his own vested interests in filing these posts from the current crop of assistant engineers, who he can control.
This tomfoolery of the Power Minister has resulted in actual work of the department not been being executed. The underground cabling project is far from complete, Goa is in the dark of the government’s plans of either generating power or initiating power purchase agreements and rural electrification is nowhere near targets set. The department is being used – as is borne out by information reaching us – simply as a cash cow.
Unless Chief Minister Parsekar, tackles Naik and reins him in, the Power department, crucial to his investment and infrastructure plans, will let his entire government’s progress down.
We will wait and see who calls the shots – CM Parsekar or Power Minister Milind Naik?
