Hosting High Tea ‘At Home'
Raj Bhawan at mercy of the Babus
His Excellency is annoyed at many senior government officials for not attending the ‘High Tea' he hosted on Republic Day ‘At Home' away from Home. Many politicians and media persons have expressed their grudge for Raj Bhawan not inviting them to exchange pleasantries.
While the rains forced the shifting of ‘At Home' function hosted by Governor, Sh. NN Vohra to Convention Centre at Canal Road, Babus at Divisional Commissioner office and Department of Information played the spoilsport for creating mess by first changing the venue to Banquet Hall at CM's residence and later to Conventional Centre. The Raj Bhawan official had to make requests to invitees to note the change in the venue and he expressed apology for the inconvenience caused.
Irked over widespread criticism of the Information Department for adopting pick and choose policy in extending invitation to the selective media-persons while leaving out many bonafide journalists from the list of invitees, the department reacted sharply to cover their folly. The Information department released the names of their favorite invitees from media category that itself has exposed their bias in extending invitation. The list itself shows contradiction of their stance as one could find multiple invitations to single media house, journalists who are not attached with any active media or no more into publishing and some backdoor accredited entrants. Many journalists whose names were reflected in the list had refuted to have received any such invitation.
The tone and tenor of the press statement were further insulting and defamatory to those bonafide journalists/publications whom the Information department have been regularly ignoring in all spheres by using the phrase, “The fact is that all the prominent and credible media personalities from the State were invited for the At Home and the list was finalized in consultation with the concerned editors.” A Journalist questioned the spokesperson's prudence as to how the novices at Information department arrived at the categorizing ‘Credible and prominent media personalities' when no such exercise has been done by the Information department till date.
Governor has desired that the Chief Minister be apprised about the highly undisciplined act on the part of higher bureaucracy that undermines such national festivities which is very common particularly among the officers from Kashmir. While such instances for not caring about national days by Kashmiri officers are not new, nothing on record suggests any action so far against them by any of the state governments. The fate of official ritual of impressing upon officers of the state government to attend the Republic Day/Independence Day celebrations as a part of their official duty ends up in their respective dustbins. Warning that refraining from the function would be construed as dereliction of the duty and disobedience of the government instructions never got materialized.
