In a rare protest, the Central Civil and Administrative Officers Association has petitioned the Centre to intervene and direct the Uttar Pradesh government to revoke the suspension of a 2010-batch IAS officer, Durga Shakti Nagpal. Regardless of the justifications UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav trots out, the officer was only doing her duty. The charge that her act of demolishing a religious structure could have led to a communal flare-up has been trashed by the report of the district magistrate, who was her immediate superior. It is clear that the officer in this case was punished for taking on powerful vested interests that were flouting the law and not for the reason proffered by the UP government. The video speech of a ruling Samajwadi Party leader, who is also a sand mafia don, bragging that he got her suspended confirms this.
Nagpal’s victimisation may be a new low in the process of political subversion of the bureaucracy, but it is not an isolated case. In Haryana, Ashok Khemka, another upright and conscientious officer, is paying the price for taking on a land grabbing VIP. In Tamil Nadu, senior bureaucrat Uma Shankar was suspended in 2010 for daring to take on the Maran brothers and the DMK. In Bihar, senior IPS officer Manoje Nath was transferred 40 times in his 39-year career because he did not dance to the tune of political masters.
Under the scheme of governance envisaged in the Indian constitution, officers of the central services are supposed to be insulated from politics and serve whichever government is elected in accordance with law. They cannot perform these tasks if their career is entirely at the whims and fancies of politicians. The Centre must intervene to ensure that Nagpal gets justice. It should also put in place a legal mechanism to ensure that while corrupt officers are brought to book, the honest ones are not hounded out. Keeping quiet will have a damaging impact on the morale of the members of the service and no government can afford it.