SEIAA Chairman's Room Locked, Opened After CM's Office Steps In

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): There seems to be no end in sight to the wrangling between Chairman of the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) SN Singh Chouhan, Principal Secretary Navneet Kothari and its member secretary Uma Maheshwari.

After Chouhan wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary against Kothari and Maheshwari, an angry Kothari got Chouhan’s office room locked. When Chouhan reached the SEIAA office on Monday morning, he found his room locked.

The employees informed him that his office room had been locked following an order from the PS. The staffers told Chouhan that the PS asked him to come to the meeting hall and that his office room had been locked.

When the issue reached the higher-ups, the Chief Minister’s Secretariat intervened in the matter. The CM’s Secretariat pulled up Kothari. Chouhan’s office room was opened at 5pm.

Chouhan said he found his office room locked in the morning, and the staff told him his chamber had been locked following an order from the PS.

In the evening, when the staff informed him that his office was open, he returned there. A dispute over giving 450 deemed permissions deepened. Even after this dispute, SEIAA did not hold any meeting.

In fact, SEIAA did not hold any meeting in the past 65 days. Chouhan reached the office to write some letters about it. Both Chouhan and the member secretary have complained against each other.

Nevertheless, the government has yet to find a solution to the issue, which can be settled only after CM’s return from a foreign trip.

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‘Chambers closed due to electrical fault’

Environmental Planning and Coordination Organisation (EPCO) administrative officer Manohar Patil said that chambers of SEIAA and other senior officers were closed on Sunday due to electrical fault.

After preliminary maintenance was carried out on Monday, the chambers were reopened.