Udalguri DC office functioning without EAC, ADC

TANGLA, April 29: That the Deputy Commissioner’s office at Udalguri under Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) has been functioning without a single Extra Assistant Commissioner (EAC) for almost a year now, and even without an Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) for almost a month is well known to the Personnel Department of the Government of Asom and the BTAD administration.

Many a time newspapers have highlighted this fact to draw the attention of the concerned authorities but to no avail. Things have come to such a stand at the DC office that common people coming to the office for getting their work done are being forced to return home dejected not only once, but day after day.

The DC office is at present functioning with a “patch-up” management. The DC of the district, having no other alternative, and in view of the piling up and increasing number of official work every day, has entrusted the additional work to a number of Block Development Officers (BDOs) in the DC office.

Thus, one such officer has to function as the Election Officer, the Sub Registrar, the District, Sub Divisional Information and Public Officer (SDIPO) for example. These officers have to attend to their actual office as well as attend field work in between.

The introduction of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in Udalguri district from April 1 this year, has still made official work at the DC office go further slow, because the officers who have been given additional charges at the DC office are under the compulsion to get themselves involved in the implementation of the NREGA in their respective fields of work.

In this situation, it has become a common practice with the people coming to the DC office with official work to wait for a number of days to find their work okayed.

Sometime, it so happens that a person has to come to the DC office for days together to get his affidavit done or to get his certificates issued because of the absence of the respective officers. Thus, the people of the district have been compelled by the existing system to suffer mental, physical and financial harassment for no fault of theirs.The disgusted people have opined that the State Government has shown utter negligence to the district by letting it suffer from the absence of the required number of officers in the office of the DC.

On the other hand, the BTAD authorities — a partner in the ruling Tarun Gogoi-led Government has also been showing signs of indifference, by letting the common people suffer due to the non-availability of officers in the DC office. A section of the suffering public have questioned as to why public organizations like the AASU, ABSU, ARSU, AASAA, and various NGOs and political parties of the district have kept mum in this regard.

However, the public at large, of the district, expect that the Government and the BTAD authorities will rise up to the occasion and remove their suffering by immediately posting the required number of officers at the office of the Udalguri DC.