From News Dispaches BHOPAL: “If a pilot can run the nation and a bus conductor the State, what prevents a mechanical engineer from functioning in place of civil engineer?”
The quote is not from an opposition leaders speech. It has been attributed to an Indian Administrative Service officer, L.N Meena who has refused to own it up. But there is no official denial from him. The newspaper which has quoted him claims to possess a taped version of what he had said.
Mr. Meena till recently administrator of the Indore Municipal Corporation and chairman of the Indore Development Authority has been transferred to Hoshangabad which Rajiv Gandhi is scheduled to visit. Meena’s transfer was ordered a day before a weekly in Indore carried his “comment.” The Chief Minister Motilal Vora, who had humble beginnings had once worked for a transport company handling odd jobs. Hence, perhaps, the comment about the bus conductor.
Meena is said to have made the comment when a reporter asked him about the departure from the convention of appointing top engineers at the Indore Development Authority and the Municipal Corporation.
The city engineer’s post in the corporation and that of the chief engineers at the city development authority are occupied by an electrical and a mechanical engineer respectably. The two posts have been conventionally held by civil engineers. This correspondent tried to contact Meena over the telephone at Indore. He was said to be “out of station.”
Article extracted from this publication >> July 28, 1989
