Many departments to be merged part of diff ministries

LUCKNOW: The burgeoning state bureaucracy may finally shed some of its weight with the UP government formally proposing to merge various government departments and bring down their number by almost two-thirds.According to UP government’s draft proposal, as many as 94 departments are proposed to be bracketed into 37 categories for their potential merger to bring about muchneeded administrative efficiency. The move comes days after a team of officials from the Niti Aayog met UP chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi and suggested a complete overhaul of administrative set up in the state to ensure greater convergence and effective implementation of public welfare schemes.TOI had on November 8 reported UP government in principle agreeing to integrate various departments concerning the health sector into one ministry instead of being scattered into four different ones —medical and health, medical education, family welfare, and mother and child welfare.UP government has now proposed the merger of departments like agriculture, cooperative, horticulture, coordination and cane development. The new department may instead be called agriculture and farmer welfare department. Likewise, the Public Works Department , estate and transport too are proposed to be merged to form Road and Transport department.Additional chief secretary (planning) Sanjiv Saran, who is closely associated with the exercise, said that the merger of departments was being made to bring about efficiency and well-coordinated functioning of the state government. He said that a concept note would soon be presented before chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi.Significantly there is another view in the bureaucracy which is against a drastic cut in the number of departments. “The departments which hardly have any work may be taken up,” said a senior IAS officer, maintaining that not more than 15 to 20 departments may eventually get merged.Notably, many departments which are proposed to be merged are being headed by different ministers. For instance, the department of energy and new energy, which are proposed to be merged, are being headed by cabinet ministers Srikant Sharma and Brijesh Pathak respectively.