No beacons on vehicles, babus to now use flags designed by Didi
Mamata Banerjee’s government has notified a scheme under which IAS officers of the Bengal cadre can use different types of flags on their official vehicles to get around a ban on beacons.
What’s more, the flags have been designed by the chief minister herself.
And no prizes for guessing, the base colour of the flag is blue, Banerjee’s favourite.
Senior state officials said that since the use of beacons was banned by the Union government, Banerjee had been thinking of some alternative to the blue lights the state had been using so that vehicles used by bureaucrats could be identified without violating rules and protocol.
“Finally, she came up with an idea and she herself conceptualised the design,” said an official of the state personnel and administrative reforms department, which issued a notification in this regard on June 20.
The state transport department will be the nodal body responsible for procurement and distribution of the flags, which will differ depending on rank of IAS officers. There will be three types of flags.
Confirming the development, state transport minister Suvendu Adhikary said officials in his department are currently surveying the requirement of flags.
“This process will be over in another couple of days, following which we will place the order with a private vendor and distribute the flags among officers based on their ranks or posts. By the end of June, all the IAS officers will have these flags displayed on their vehicles,” said Adhikary.
The transport department will outsource the flags and the vendor will be selected through an open tender.
The flags will be both “seniorityspecific” as well as “post- specific.”