On Mahashivratri, Shiva devotees are worshiping Baba Bholenath and Mata Parvati today (15 February) in Shivalayas and some at their homes also. But Bihar government employees remained busy performing puja aarti of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Health Minister Mangal Pandey. A unique scene was seen in Patna today, where health department employees performed Aarti Mangal by placing pictures of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Health Minister Mangal Pandey. During this time, auspicious devotional song ‘You are mother, father is you’ was also sung.
All these employees are account managers working under NHM, who can also be called account managers. All of them are working in different blocks of different districts. Today in Patna, all the employees gathered at one place and performed aarti with the pictures of the Chief Minister and the Health Minister, and also kept placards with their demands. These people have been demanding for many years that we should be included in the Public Health Management Cadre. These people also agitated several times regarding this. But when things did not work out till now, they started worshiping only the Chief Minister and the Health Minister.
Demand for inclusion in the cadre by pleading through puja
These people are appealing to CM Nitish and the Health Minister through puja to demand their inclusion in the cadre. Health Manager Gayatri Gupta said, “For the respectable cadre, today we first went to the temple and worshiped Lord Bholenath and then came to console our Chief Minister and Health Minister and perform their aarti.” Now have come to convince them with God’s blessings. Because God has blessed us, we have reached here. Now if both of them agree then we may get some good news by the time of Holi.
Demand to worship CM and Health Minister and include them in the cadre.
Geeta Kumari said, “After worshiping God, we came to worship our Chief Minister and Health Minister. We are requesting that by Holi, we should include you people in the cadre so that we can celebrate Holi well.” State President of Health Managers Association, Arvind Kumar said that before the elections, Health Minister Mangal Pandey’s wife had given assurance that after the elections, we will include you people in different cadres but the elections are over. Again he became the Health Minister, Nitish Kumar ji took over the post of Chief Minister but till now we were deprived of the cadre.
He further said, “Today is the day of Mahashivratri, everyone is worshiping Lord Bholenath and we are worshiping these people. General Secretary Chandan Kumar said that we are giving more importance to these two than Shiva. Employees junior to us were given level 5-6 and we were not included in the cadre. That’s why we are worshiping them because these two are our idols.” Overall, the employees have adopted a new method of protest in the name of worship and instead of raising slogans for their demands, they started performing Aarti Mangal.