There seems to be a quite unease prevailing on the fifth floor of the annex building of Uttar Pradesh secretariat these days. The obvious reason is the existence of multiple power-centres which have upset the equilibrium delicately balanced among various institutions of the governance.

The fifth floor which houses the UP chief minister’s office in Lucknow is recognised as the ultimate centre of the state power. The all-powerful chief minister’s secretariat runs the whole state from the fifth floor through diktats which are traditionally taken as god-ordained by the bureaucracy in the state. But this practice which often borders on impropriety is challenged now by new chief secretary Jawed Usmani, a suave and seasoned bureaucrat known for his strict adherence to rules and bureaucratic code of conduct.

Sources in the state government maintain that Usmani had turned down many suggestions of secretary to the chief minister Anita Singh, a 1990 batch IAS officer, who has been throwing her weight around because of her proximity to Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. Anita had served as secretary to Mulayam Singh Yadav in his previous stint as the chief minister. Shortly after Akhilesh assumed the charge of the chief minister, Anita Singh’s posting raised many an eyebrow.

Government sources admit that she first courted controversy by forcibly occupying the fifth floor office of Shahshank Shekhar Singh, the all powerful-cabinet secretary in the Mayawati’s regime. This was seen in the UP bureaucracy as a signal of changing power equations in the new regime and Anita Singh’s ambition of fitting into Shashank Shekhar’s shoes. But what appears to have irked the state’s top bureaucrat Jawed Usmani is believed to be some of her recommendations on reshuffle in the administration.

Usmani is learnt to have turned down those recommendations and asserted his right as the state’s top civil servant. Official sources say that this is the first time that a chief secretary has stood up against diktats emanating from the fifth floor. Given Anita Singh’s proximity to Mulayam Singh Yadav and her position as secretary to the chief minister, it is quite unlikely that the woman official would easily give in. However, her acts of indiscretion are bound to raise hackles of those bureaucrats who strictly follow the rulebook. Perhaps the whole episode may turn out to be a test case for the new chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, who is yet to come to grip with the issues of governance and intricate ways of bureaucratic functioning in the state.