A Government on Leave

Infighting, indiscipline and administrative chaos in Congress-led Himachal Pradesh expose a state teetering on the brink of collapse.

Himachal Pradesh

In Himachal Pradesh, governance seems to have taken a long vacation. Over the past week, the Congress-led state government has made headlines for the spectacular implosion within its bureaucracy and police forces. The sudden forced leave of the state’s police chief, the additional chief secretary (home) and the Shimla superintendent of police amid a high-profile death investigation is a sign that no one, including the Chief Minister, is in charge any longer.

The death of Vimal Negi, a senior engineer whose body was found in Gobind Sagar Lake, spiralled into an open turf war within the top echelons of the state’s police and administrative services. The spectacle would be almost comical were it not so tragic: a superintendent publicly attacking his superiors in a press conference; a police chief undercutting his own force in a court affidavit; an additional chief secretary bypassing the advocate general’s office. Each of these actions alone would be considered insubordinate. Taken together, they point to an executive that has lost all semblance of control.

Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, whose image as a strong administrator has been fraying for months, appears now merely to be reacting to crises. His decision to send all three officials on leave was presented as a firm exercise of authority. In reality, it is the bureaucratic equivalent of switching off the lights and hoping no one notices the fire. The real embarrassment here is that the government let it fester until it became a judicial and political embarrassment. The order to the officials to “proceed on leave” came only after the state high court intervened and handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The state’s response reeks of panic rather than purpose. The mass reassignment of portfolios and the temporary elevation of vigilance officers to key posts might keep the machinery running, but it won’t restore credibility.

The Congress, reeling from electoral setbacks nationally, should be particularly alarmed. Himachal Pradesh was one of the few states where the party could still claim a toehold. But Sukhu’s tenure has been marred by crises of both confidence and competence. Earlier this year, a bitter intra-party revolt had reduced his government to a minority for several precarious weeks. Now, administrative anarchy has overtaken political instability.

The Vimal Negi case, in which crucial evidence in the form of a pen drive was allegedly deleted from the record, has become emblematic of this dysfunction. For a grieving family and a concerned public, the only solace has come from the court-ordered handover to the CBI, which is in fact a damning vote of no-confidence in the state’s own investigative capacity.

Chief Minister Sukhu’s defenders argue that cracking the whip on senior officials shows his intolerance for indiscipline. But discipline without direction is meaningless. Leadership is not demonstrated by belated punishment but by the ability to prevent implosion in the first place. And when the most senior civil servants and law enforcers in a state resort to airing grievances in public and undermining each other in court, the problem lies not just in the ranks, but at the very top.

As the Congress high command surveys the wreckage in Shimla, it should ask itself a simple question: can it afford to let this farce continue? If Sukhu cannot command respect within his own administration, he cannot be expected to govern the state. If his appointees are not up to the task, they must be replaced and not reshuffled. And if the party continues to treat Himachal Pradesh as an afterthought, it will lose the state not to the BJP’s strength, but to its own misrule.

In the hill state of Himachal, the snowball of administrative dysfunction has turned into an avalanche. It is now up to the Congress to decide whether it wants to dig itself out or be buried under it.