NEW DELHI: Over a hundred retired civil servants of both state and central government services on Sunday wrote an open letter to the citizens saying that a “disturbing” trend has emerged in the direction of country’s governance over the last few years, subjecting civil society activists to various punitive acts, including arrest and indefinite detentions.
Altogether 102 retired civil servants from across the country wrote the letter, making it clear that the grouping owes no political affiliation but believes in commitment to the Constitution. “The foundational values of our republic and cherished norms of governance, which we had taken as immutable, have been under the relentless assault of an arrogant, majotarian state,” the group wrote.
“The civil society activists striving to defend these principles are subject to arrest and indefinite detention under draconian laws that blot our statute book. The establishment does its best to discredit them as anti-national and foreign agents,” the letter alleged.
The group was apparently objecting to National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s recent statement at the National Police Academy. “The new frontier of war, what you call the fourth generation warfare, is the civil society. ... It is the civil society that can be subverted, that can be suborned, that can be divided, that can be manipulated to hurt the interest of a nation,” the NSA had said.