West Bengal govt warns officials over service delays amid local body vacuum

West Bengal’s BJP government is tightening the screws on the bureaucracy over delays in delivering public services, warning officials of disciplinary action if they fail to process applications for industrial approvals, licences, and other citizen services within prescribed deadlines.

Departmental heads must issue show-cause notices to officials responsible for delays and initiate action under service rules if their explanations are found unsatisfactory, officials said. Officials receiving show-cause notices will have 15 days to submit written explanations.

The directive, issued by Chief Secretary Manoj Agarwal, also requires departments to submit monthly reports detailing applications deemed approved because officials failed to act on time, show-cause notices issued, and disciplinary action taken.

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Political upheaval hits governance

The order comes as the administration grapples with service delivery backlogs following the political upheaval triggered by the BJP’s assembly election victory in May.

The change of government was followed by the withdrawal of several Trinamool Congress (TMC)-elected representatives from local administration, with some reportedly staying away amid fears of political retribution. In several panchayats, pradhans stopped attending offices or resigned, while TMC councillors and civic office-bearers quit their posts in municipalities.

These vacancies disrupted routine administration, prompting the state government to appoint administrators in several civic bodies and amend the Panchayat Act to allow officials to assume certain functions.

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Civic body stalemate

The disruption has stalled both routine services and major project approvals. In Kolkata, more than 300 construction proposals remained pending for months after the Municipal Building Committee (MBC), which clears major building plans, stopped functioning, according to government sources.

The committee had not met since February and was formally dissolved on June 8 following an order from the state Municipal Affairs and Urban Development Department. The impasse affected proposals for commercial buildings, hospitals, educational institutions, and residential projects on larger plots. Developers said projects were held up for months, while Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) sources claimed the civic body lost several crores of rupees in revenue.

The KMC has now reconstituted the committee after a six-month gap, though its formation has raised questions regarding legal validity. Section 391 of the KMC Act, 1980, specifies which government departments and professional bodies may be represented on the MBC. The new committee's provision for inviting experts from Rail India Technical and Economic Service Limited (RITES) and IRCON International Limited for specific projects has drawn scrutiny, as these organisations are not listed under the Act.

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Rural and municipal vacuum

In rural areas, a majority of West Bengal’s 3,339 gram panchayats have been left without functioning pradhans — most of them from the TMC — who stopped attending offices after the party lost power. Their absence affected development project approvals, the convening of gram sabhas, and payments requiring the signatures of elected heads.

The state subsequently amended the West Bengal Panchayats Act to empower officials to take over certain duties when both the pradhan and deputy pradhan are unavailable.

Several municipalities have similarly been left without elected leadership following resignations and the dissolution of civic boards. In Kolkata, Mayor Firhad Hakim resigned on June 5; the state government dissolved the elected KMC board three days later and placed the corporation under an administrator.

Beyond routine administrative work, the vacuum stalled decisions requiring the approval of elected representatives and statutory committees.

Systemic hurdles remain

While primarily aimed at industrial applications, the chief secretary’s latest directive also covers public services, instructing departments to comply with the West Bengal Right to Public Services Act, 2013, which mandates delivery deadlines for specified citizen services.

This is not the administration's first attempt to enforce bureaucratic deadlines. On October 28, Agarwal directed departments to respond to inter-departmental communications and approval requests within seven working days, citing delays in obtaining comments, views, and concurrence as key reasons for pending files and stalled government decisions.

The government already possesses a mechanism to penalise delays under the Right to Public Services Act, which provides for penalties against designated officers who fail to deliver notified services on time without sufficient cause.

“But the causes of the present backlog are not uniform. An officer who fails to process an application can be proceeded against under service rules. A file awaiting a committee's approval cannot be cleared by the processing officer alone. Nor can a panchayat employee automatically exercise powers assigned by law to an elected pradhan,” pointed out an official.

The government will have to establish whether delays resulted from an officer's inaction or from the absence of an authorised decision-making body, the official added. For now, the directive places the onus of explaining delays squarely on application-handling officials, without addressing the underlying institutional disruption in local bodies.