Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Sunday took her officials by surprise when she chose to suddenly return from her tour of certain districts well before schedule to undertake an inspection of various public services in state capital Lucknow.
Barely a few hours earlier, officials had got a whiff about her sudden plan to take a round of various establishments in the state capital.
As such, the entire staff at the local tehsil was on their toes when she chose to drive down straight from the helipad to the local tehsil office.
Sure enough she detected several loopholes and expressed her displeasure with the general state of affairs at the office. She reprimanded Divisional Commissioner Prashant Trivedi and told him to ensure improvement in the overall working of the office.
Her next destination was Balrampur Hospital in the neighbourhood, where she spent a good 20 minutes visiting wards and talking to patients.
She castigated hospital director Dr Shobh Nath for some cobwebs she noticed on the ceiling of one of the wards and ordered for installation of a list in the ward wing of the 600-bed hospital.
That was followed by a visit to Lucknow's busiest Qaiser Bagh police station, where Mayawati flipped over some pages of the crime diary in which she pointed out some discrepancies.
Cops at the police station were in a tizzy as she took a quick round of the entire area telling them to pull up their socks.
From the police station, she reverted to yet another hospital (350-bed Shyama Prasad Mukherjee hospital) which caters to a chunk of the population in downtown.
After a quick round of the wards, the chief minister headed for the more recently built modern 395-bed Lohia hospital in another part of the city.
According to Lohia hospital director Dr R S Dubey, "She was quite satisfied with our cleanliness as well as patient care."
He said, "She talked to several patients, who expressed their full satisfaction with the treatment they were receiving here."