Kolkata: CM Suvendu Adhikari and most of his newly appointed ministers attended a training programme titled “Mantrider Pathshala” on intricacies of running the Bengal govt administration at NSATI in Salt Lake on Saturday. Addressing the ministers, the CM said they must not keep work pending and called on them to keep files moving.“The CM wanted to ensure that ministers don’t face any issues on account of their inexperience,” an official said, explaining the rationale of the programme. Most of Bengal’s newly appointed ministers, with the exception of the CM himself, Tapas Roy and Nisith Pramanik, have no ministerial experience.“The CM wanted ministers to be trained on laws and rules so that those can be followed properly in govt decisions,” the official added.The ministers were trained on financial rules, administrative approval processes, tendering, govt procurement policies and accountability in the assembly among others. This is the first time that NSATI, an administrative training institute for IAS and WBCS officers, organised a training session of the kind.The ministers were informed about decisions that can be taken in the cabinet and those that can be taken by individual ministers as well as on issues that might involve legal complications. The official said: “The CM is concerned with scams and financial irregularities during the previous Trinamool govt and he does not want a recurrence of such episodes.”The training session comes days ahead of the placing of the state budget in the Bengal assembly on June 22. The session trained ministers on budget procedure and how to make departmental budgets. They were also given an overview of norms for legislative grant approvals and public fund allocation.The ministers were trained on how to run their offices efficiently. First-time MLAs turned ministers, such as higher education minister Jagannath Chattopadhyay, finance minister Swapan Dasgupta, health minister Sharadwat Mukherjee, sports, youth affairs and consumer affairs minister Indranil Khan, and minister for food processing, horticulture and IT Kalyan Chakraborty attended the session which began at 10 am on Saturday.Minister of state for housing Kalita Majhi was also present at the session. Officials said the purpose of the session was to impart practical training in administrative work, law and police-framing.
