PATNA: A retired IAS officer of 1980 batch Manoj Srivastava succumbed to the infection of Covid-19 at Patna AIIMS on Thursday. He was 65.
He was the founder secretary of the Disaster Management Department of Bihar who charted out effective strategies.
Widely known as an upright people-friendly officer throughout his career right from the first posting as SDM to the rank of principal secretary, Manoj Srivastava remained popular as a tough taskmaster and uncompromising with the undue pressure from any corner.
He was credited for the facilitation of the world's largest free food distribution during 2007 in Bihar floods under the UNDP Disaster Risk Management Project.
The most erudite achievement associated with him was the research that he did on Naxalism in Bhojpur where he was serving as the DM.
He was an alumnus of the London School of Economics, Cambridge University of Cambridge, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi besides being a distinguished fellow of IIM, Ahmadabad.
He was known as a running encyclopaedia of knowledge in the bureaucratic circle and had studied in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. Prior to being selected to IAS, Srivastava had been a probationer officer of Indian Police Services (IPS).
He had retired from the Indian Administrative Services in 2016.