Why DMK government’s move to appoint four IAS officers as official spokespersons will not go well with TN's political class?

For the first time in the history of Tamil Nadu, the DMK-led government, on Monday, appointed four senior IAS officers - J Radhakrishnan, Gagandeep Singh Bedi, Dheeraj Kumar and P Amudha - as spokespersons for the government.

 

The appointment comes at a time when there are only eight more months to go for the Assembly elections. An official release from the government said that “the spokespersons have been appointed to disseminate key information, schemes, and other essential matters of various departments to the public through the media in a timely and accurate manner and to coordinate among the departments.”

 

The DMK government has already been taking several measures to reach out to the general public who have benefited through the welfare schemes. The four IAS officers will take information relating to the announcements made in each department, from the respective secretaries, and disseminate accordingly.

 

While the four officers chosen are senior bureaucrats with a deep knowledge of the state’s political history, this may not go well with the political class in the state - the ministers, MLAs, and the MPs of the ruling party.

 

“The bureaucracy will only give statistics and data of the schemes implemented. They will not be able to describe the political nature of the schemes and cannot turn a political narrative in favour of the ruling party. This move may not favour us,” says a DMK legislator on conditions of anonymity. “A cabinet minister addressing an issue and a bureaucrat handling it may not be the same. The very thought process is different. We are the heart and the soul of each constituency,” says the legislator. Apparently, there are many DMK MLAs who have been at loggerheads with the district administration and have been raising complaints against the bureaucracy.

 

When Jayalalithaa was in power, she was the only spokesperson for the government. No bureaucrat or any minister from her cabinet would choose to answer the questions from the media on record. Though Jayalalithaa did not have many called press conferences like her arch-rival and DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi, she would answer ad-hoc press conferences and send out detailed press notes. During the earlier DMK regime under Karunanidhi, he was the only spokesperson for his government. Anytime, he was available for any question from the media. In fact, every day as he walked out of his party office at 1.30 pm, Karunanidhi would throw a headline for the evening newspapers, ensuring that the political narrative in the state revolved and evolved around him.

 

When Edappadi Palaniswami was in power, during the tail end of his term, his cabinet colleague D. Jayakumar acted as the spokesperson, taking questions from the media and explaining the political narrative behind every government move. However, the M.K. Stalin-led government, since coming to power in 2021, seems to depend on bureaucracy rather than the political class.

India