Orissa doctors in peripheral health service cadre are in deep anguish as the Health Minister is suspected to have encouraged a syndicate of bureaucrats of his department hailing from his part of the State to act as deciders of their fate when transfer on promotion is set to hit the majority.
Ad hocism in administration has given birth to a government resolution to recruit doctors straight in the class-one-junior rank, to reach which level the doctors earlier were serving for at least two decades. So, all the doctors, who were earlier in Junior Class-I, are promoted to senior class-I rank. The scenario has given a jerk to senior doctors and an opportunity to shrewd bureaucrats to catch fish from the mud of anxiety of the doctors to bag comfortable postings.
Transfer and posting in health department is a syndrome that often looks like scams. It is open knowledge that there are doctors who cultivate their posting to lucrative positions or continuance in the capital city for decades when true-to-the profession-persons are shunted out into remote locations to perish for their honesty.
With such experience, when the doctors on promotion to senior class-I rank are in natural anxiety about their postings, two bureaucrats, one, an Additional Secretary and the other, an assistant in the health department are marked to have given the impression to aspirants that they are the persons that enjoy the confidence of the minister in preparing and finalizing the transfer list. These two belong to the western part of Orissa from where the Minister comes and are conspicuous by their absence on their respective desks as even the attendants say that they are closeted with the minister in finalization of the transfer list. One of these two belongs to Sonepur when the other hails from Bargarh.
The nexus seems unholy, because a minister is not normally expected to pick up persons only of his locality as dependable ones. The CM may take note of it and collect intelligence on whether or not such a regional combine is playing the tricks.