Collector appears before House panel

Bhubaneswar: Balangir collector M Muthukumar on Wednesday appeared before the assembly protocol committee for being 'discourteous' towards leader of opposition Narasingha Mishra.
In August 2014, Mishra filed a complaint that Muthukumar did not send acknowledgements of a single letter though he had written a series of letters to the district collector on different issues.It violated Book Circular-47 and matter was referred to the protocol committee.
The Book Circular 47 published by the state parliamentary affairs department says, "Officials shall, in the discharge of duties, act in a courteous manner and shall not adopt dilatory tactics in dealing with the members."
After the hearing, BJD legislator and chairman of the protocol committee Nrusingha Sahu said the panel noticed negligence on the part of the district collector. "Since he could not produce sufficient information about acknowledgement letter numbers and the date on which the letters were sent to the leader of opposition, we have asked him to appear in the next meeting with more details. Appropriate action would be taken against the officer if the panel will notice violation of Book Circular-47 by him," he said.
Talking to the media after appearing before the panel, Muthukumar claimed that there is no violation of Book Circular-47. He said his office replied to all the letters written by the leader of opposition.
When asked, Mishra said it would not be judicious to comment about hearing of the protocol committee since he was not present while it was going on. For the past several months, MLAs from both the ruling and opposition expressed unhappiness in the assembly over high-handedness of bureaucrats towards public representatives.
During the budget session in February, Congress legislators had created ruckus in the assembly alleging Sundargarh superintendent of police R Prakash of refsuing to meet the local Congress MLA Jogesh Singh citing that he was busy in other engagements.