Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who assumed his office on Thursday, did not hide his displeasure over the way some IAS and IPS officers had functioned during the previous YSR Congress party regime.
The chief minister held a brief meeting with heads of various departments, principal secretaries and special secretaries, soon after he took charge in his chambers in the first block of the state secretariat in Amaravati.
“When I first became the chief minister in 1995, there was a lot of respect among the people for the IAS, IPS and IFS officers. They used to guide the chief minister and ministers in the implementation of various decision and follow the rules strictly. Some of them might be still in service now,” he recalled.
Naidu regretted that the bureaucracy had lost its sanctity now.
“Especially in the last five years, the entire administration has derailed. The bureaucrats started toeing the line of politicians in power and ignored the common man. They failed to deliver goods,” he said.
He said he was terribly hurt with the way some IAS and IPS officers had functioned during the previous dispensation.
“I don’t want to talk about what they had done to me. And I won’t speak about it either. But I never expected that these All-India Service officers would degrade to such a low level and destroy the systems. I don’t want to pinpoint any officer. But I can only ask these IAS and IPS officers to do self-introspection and act as per the rules,” he said.
Naidu said he would streamline the administration in the coming days and asked the officials to follow the rules while discharging their duties.
“We shall have a detailed meeting later,” he said.
