DM B.N Singh, Year in Review: From acting against land mafia to revamping schools- A strong proponent of visible good work

Greater Noida (17/11/18) : ‘I am not here to make relations but to do my work with all possible sincerity’, said Gautam Buddh Nagar District Magistrate BN Singh last year at a public event graced by who’s who of the Noida.

His message was crisp and clear and completely matched with his image of a no-nonsense official. It has been 19 months since he has been serving on the post of the administrative head of the district and the reforms brought by are much visible on the ground.

Gautam Buddh Nagar DM BN Singh has been working tirelessly to battle with different major issues of the district. From revamping the government primary schools to getting tough on land mafia, Singh’s 19 month long on-going tenure has seen significant steps taken to revamp different domains of the district’s administrative set-up.

In the last week of April 2017, he had taken charge as the District Magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar district. Singh, a 2009 batch IAS officer was serving as an additional resident commissioner in New Delhi prior to this posting as DM, GB Nagar.

At the time of his joining in the district he had clearly stated that his priority will be to ensure that the state government’s policies are expeditiously implemented. 

Soon after taking charge, BN Singh launched an intensive drive against land grabbers as the head of state’s anti-land mafia task force in the district. In November 17, he also invoked Goonda Act against 90 identified usurpers. The strict action, largely unprecedented in the region took land encroachers with shock and helped district administration to get many hundred acres of illegaly occupied land free.

DM BN Singh has also been at the forefront of demand for setting up of a separate municipal corporation in Noida. In September 2017, he wrote a strong worded letter to state’s urban development minister Suresh Khanna, highlighting the need for a dedicated municipal body to look into the civic woes of the district.

Since then Singh has been strongly advocating for the formation of a municipal corporation in the district and on multiple occasion has publically endorsed the benefits of the same.

At a public event last year he expressed his dissatisfaction over the fact how many of the central government schemes could not be implemented in the district owing to the present structure which makes it non-eligible.

His focus on the public-private partnership to revamp the government primary schools has been the talk of the town. Through signing of number of MoU’s he has completely restructured large number of government schools in the district and paved way for fulfilling of their long term sustainable basic needs such as clean water and sanitation.

His one other innovative tactic is to get public announcement done of large public defaulters. The style where a drum-beater would go up to the office of the defaulter and with sound and noise, publicly name shame the person helped the district administration to bring back large amount of defaulting revenue.

As of now he has still kept his priorities unaltered. His clear directive to police to act stringently under the Goonda Act, Gangster Act and Section 151 CrPC to control the sand mining mafia, land mafia and liquor cartels has resulted in efficient and visible change in the ground reality.

However, the over one and half year tenure of the district’s administrative head has not been free of small controversies.

In May this year, the district became the focal point of the IAS-IPS turf war, when DM BN Singh returned the transfer order of 10 police inspectors sent to him for approval by the SSP. However with a day the issue was resolved and the order was approved, the message indeed was sent by then.

Apart from this, there have been incidents when the not so comfortable equation between the Noida Authority and the District administration has also come out in open, with the later criticising the former for its inability to deal with a number of public welfare and grievance issues.

The district administration had to also face difficulties in dealing with the schools on the fee hike issue and parents have repeatedly alleged of not being provided adequate relief. The incident of a school where the team of administrative officials was allegedly barred from entering for hours after a food-poisoning fiasco had also done not much favour to district administration’s image in front of parents, who already doubt the degree of control over private institutes.