Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will hold an administrative meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Wednesday where senior officials of the state administration, including those from districts, will be physically present.

This will be the first review meeting where senior officials of the rank of joint secretaries and above in addition to the DMs and the SPs will be present physically since the Covid-19 pandemic had hit the country in March 2020.

“The chief minister usually holds a state-level administrative meeting with all the officials once a year. This year's meeting is considered significant as the chief minister is likely to make the administration more focused on development projects, which had come to a halt since the beginning of the pandemic,” said a senior government official.

Sources said right now government offices are operating with 50 per cent of the employees on a given day and most senior officials work from home. Even Nabanna is closed twice a week for sanitisation.

“Development work of the government is basically on the field which can’t be done from home... As Covid cases are coming down and hospitalisation rate during the third wave is very low, it is expected that the chief minister will ask officers to focus on development projects again,” said a source.

Amid the pandemic, the government could only take up emergency work in terms of major infrastructure projects.

But now, it is time to get going as a number of projects including rail overbridges, roads and buildings are pending, sources said.

Some officials said that the timing of the meeting is interesting as civic bodies in the state would go for polls in two phases in February.

“All these civic bodies are run by administrators, who are basically government officers, as tenure of the elected bodies had expired and elections could not be held owing to the pandemic. The chief minister might ask them to ensure delivery of service in the urban areas ahead of the polls. If people don't get proper services ahead of polls, it might go against the ruling party,” said a source.