Officers at the fourth and fifth floor of Bengal state secretariat Nabanna were in for a surprise on Wednesday afternoon, albeit an unpleasant one, when chief minister Mamata Banerjee paid a sudden visit to the Home and Hill Affairs department.

The unpleasantness, sources at Nabanna confirmed, was mutual since the chief minister was visibly disappointed at the 25 per cent turnout of employees around noon and the stacks of files which were found bundled on empty desks.

Banerjee, sources said, made no effort to hide her irritation at the state of affairs in her own office premises. Incidentally, Banerjee herself is in charge of the department and her unscheduled appearance at the two floors was an exceptional departure from her usual routine of heading straight for her own office on the 14^th floor of the building upon her arrival at Nabanna.

Banerjee, it was learnt, questioned the officers present on reasons for the thin attendance and also enquired about the kind of attendance the office had on 10 March, the day a section of state government employees had called a day-long strike demanding hike in Dearness Allowance. Besides asking the employees about their well being, the chief minister also asked officers accompanying her to take pictures of the vacant desks and the piled up files on them. She spent a little over 20 minutes on the two floors before heading for her 14^th floor chamber.

While the surprise visit led to raised eyebrows of Nabanna babus, many felt this move could have been a fallout of the multiple complaints about the department that had landed at the chief minister’s desk. Also, regardless of the high turnout at the rest of Nabanna on the day of strike, information with the chief minister’s office suggests that the home department registered poor attendance on 10 March. One possible explanation for that could be, sources explained, a majority of employees in Home and Hill Affairs were members of the Left-back coordination committee.

At a time when the state, acting on its previously issued warning, is handing out show cause notices to employees across the state who stayed away from work on the day of the strike, it was not clear whether Banerjee intended to initiate any disciplinary action against those caught red-handed violating service norms in her own department.