Maharashtra Minister Walks Out Meeting Funding Question

This week, a sudden burst of education announcements raises eyebrows, a minister walks out when the conversation turns to money, and the Bombay High Court once again finds that some civic problems become visible only when they reach a judge's doorstep. Season of announcements With the Union Education Ministry under scrutiny over the NEET controversy, there has been a flurry of activity in Maharashtra’s School Education Department, with Education Minister Dada Bhuse appearing to have hit the accelerator. First came the announcement of more than 30,000 teacher recruitments. Then, the state cleared a decade-old demand to regularise over 3,000 contractual Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan employees and announced the launch of ‘Super 100’, a programme to prepare government school students for JEE and NEET. The flurry of announcements comes even as demands for Bhuse’s resignation over the TET leak have surfaced sporadically. Uncomfortable question A district-level healthcare review in north Maharashtra was proceeding routinely, with officials flagging a shortage of doctors, poor infrastructure and the difficulty of posting medical staff to remote areas. The mood changed when a senior official raised the funding crunch with the minister presiding over the meeting. The official pointed out that the district was so short of funds that even transporting medicines to rural hospitals on time had become a challenge. That, sources said, was not a subject the minister was keen to pursue. He abruptly walked out of the meeting, leaving the issue unresolved. Justice next door Issues faced by citizens do not reach the courts only through formal petitions; they also surface through the judiciary’s own experiences. During a hearing last week, Bombay High Court Acting Chief Justice Ravindra Ghuge raised concerns over what the court described as selective enforcement by the Nashik Municipal Corporation. The court noted that a retired HC judge had been struggling with loud music from a marriage hall next door till 4 am while his wife was ill. Despite repeated complaints, the civic body took no action, the court observed. In June, the court had highlighted civic failures over drinking water, noting that former judges living in another city had reported receiving water only once in 10 days.