Yogi's minister seeks 3 big TVs from dept, retracts after letter leaked

A senior Uttar Pradesh minister sought three big screen TV sets from the health department he headed in contravention of the rules.

Although the minister's personal secretary owned up the letter after the leak and the demand was withdrawn, the Opposition parties pounced on the state government.

According to the officials, the personal secretary to health minister Siddharth Nath Singh, who was also the spokesman of the government, wrote a letter to the Director General of Health Services stating that the minister desired installation of three big screen TV sets of 48, 42 and 32 inches at his official residence and asked him to comply with the request.

The letter was, however, leaked causing huge embarrassment to the government. The health officials said that there was no rule under which the TV sets could have been provided to the minister.

The personal secretary to the minister, Tilak Raj, wrote another letter to the DG, health, stating that he had made the request without obtaining permission from the minister and asked the officials to treat the earlier letter as cancelled.

Although the aides of the minister said that the latter had reprimanded Raj after he came to know about the letter, sources in the health department confided that the PS could not have written the letter without the minister's knowledge.

The Opposition parties criticised the minister and said that it showed that the ministers in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet were squandering public money on their personal needs.