Chief Minister felt the earlier name had a negative connotation

The War Room in Mantralaya will now be called Sankalp Kaksha or Mission Room. According to official sources, the idea for the change came from Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray who felt the word ‘war’ had a negative connotation.

Former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had opened the room to review projects such as the Metro.

New concept

In May 2015, Mr. Fadnavis held his first meeting in the ‘CM’s War Room’, a concept new to Mantralaya and one that garnered media attention. Its objective was to push long-pending projects stuck in bureaucratic bottlenecks with military efficiency; hence the name. The room had a dash board, maps, and projectors for showing drone surveys, among other things.

It was headed by Officer on Special Duty to the CM Kaustubh Dhavse who worked in close coordination with the CM’s additional chief secretary Praveen Pardeshi. Mr. Dhavse was assisted by interns with degrees from premier institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. Some of the projects monitored in the War Room included the Metro projects, Coastal Road, Navi Mumbai airport, irrigation projects and the Shivaji statue that were in the offing for more than a decade.

Only the top-most bureaucrats and ministers had access to the 50-seater room, where confidential decisions were taken. For example, if a project related to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority was being discussed, only the top official and an additional officer were allowed, apart from the relevant secretaries, ministers and chief secretary. A schedule would be drawn a week in advance and meetings would be held once in two months.

“We would work in war mode, reviewing 30 projects in two hours. Targets and strategies were time-bound, people were focused on delivering specific targets. The drone footage would be used to corroborate on-ground information. People couldn’t point fingers at each other as the person concerned would be in the meeting. In the war room, we executed 375 km of Metro lines, started work on the Navi Mumbai airport that was held up for 25 years,” said Mr. Dhavse, who refused to comment on the name change.

The MVA government has given its own spin to the effort. A source in the CMO said, “It was the CM’s idea to change its name. He felt the word ‘war’ was negative and wanted a more positive word. The government takes up a lot of missions and this room will monitor all of them. Hence, the new name.”

Another source in the CMO said, “The CM felt the word Mission Room or Sankalp Kaksha was more appropriate. This is Maharashtra, so we should have a Marathi name. That is why it was changed. It sounds more appropriate, but it is not a move for political one-upmanship.”