RP Singh, national spokesperson, BJP, has praised Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal for actively engaging with people and effectively handling Covid-19 and said that a good administrator will know how to navigate political influence and bring in good governance.  

“Mumbai municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal has actively engaged with people and handled Covid-19 effectively since he took charge in April last year. Mumbai cases are coming down because of his good work. A good administrator will know how to navigate political pressure or influence and bring in good governance. He will handle any situation and he is bound to be successful,” said Singh.

He was speaking to Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now, in a live webcast on Friday of the Visionary Talk series held by the public policy and governance analysis platform.

Singh said that an administrator has to coordinate between the centre and the state, and if he is weak and under political influence, things there can be in disorder. “Because you have to work in coordination with the centre and if there is too much political interference it is bound to create difficulties and problems.”  

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Giving an example of the Delhi high court’s criticism of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal over the oxygen crisis in the national capital, Singh noted that he has been an administrative officer and knows how the work is done in government, coordination is done in a crisis to get work done and if he is unable to do that it raises doubts on his abilities as a bureaucrat. Singh, who is also a national secretary of BJP, said that in Mumbai, if Chahal is able to coordinate things it will give positive results.

He said with the three-party alliance in power in Maharashtra there is race among them to take credit for supply of Remdesivir, vaccines, oxygen, etc., but an good administrator will be able to manage the situation successfully.

“There is a race among all three parties on who will supply Remdesivir, vaccines, oxygen, etc., and put their stamp on supplies. If the official manages to navigate the situation and take the onus of responsibly on his shoulders it is bound to give good results whether it is Mumbai or other city.”

In Delhi, he said the administrative punch was missing, and criticised Kejriwal for giving ‘false promises’ of setting up oxygen plants in Delhi when the city was gasping for breath and a large number of people are dying.

“After declaring on national television on April 15 that there was no shortage of oxygen in Delhi, on April 19, he in a turn-around said there was shortage. What went wrong in four days? There. There is deficiency in planning. When Kejriwal should be prepared for a peak of 50,000 daily cases in Delhi his governance is proving that as on today he has surrendered. It only needs good vision to be good administrator,” he said.

He added India does not have any shortage of oxygen and asked that when DRDO can provide 1,000 beds facility within only four days, what is the problem with states when they have no shortage of funds to provide services?
 
He gave the example of Gurdwaras in Delhi providing free oxygen to people which has come to be known as ‘oxygen langar’ and said that Kejriwal could have easily appealed to corporates to donate 5,000 concentrators to distribute to public in Delhi. He said that Delhi government could have also provided their MLAs with oxygen concentrators to distribute to public.

“A good concentrator costs Rs 50,000 if 1,000 such concentrators had been provided to people it would have provide huge relief to people of Delhi at the cost of peanuts. I am waiting for Kejriwal’s promise of activating eight oxygen generating plants by May 8 in Delhi. I will go around searching for them. He promised a total of 44 oxygen plants by May 30. I will do a survey on May 30 to find out if they are working,” he said.

India has been reporting over 3 lakh coronavirus daily for more than a week now. As per union health ministry data updated at 8 am.  India on Friday posted a record daily rise of over 3.86 lakh new Covid-19 cases and continued to post over 3,000 deaths for the third consecutive day. As per the latest available figures, India's tally of total Covid-19 cases stands at 1,87,62,976 – the highest since the pandemic began in 2019. The number of deaths jumped by 3,498 over the last 24 hours taking the total death toll to 2,08,330.