THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A squabble between two IAS officers has come out into the open with N Prasanth, special secretary in the agriculture department, criticising his senior A Jayathilak, additional chief secretary (finance), in a Facebook post on Saturday. In response to a comment on his Facebook post, Prasanth even termed Jayathilak “insane”.
The rumble within the administration taking a public tone has not gone down well with the state government. Chief Secretary Sarada Muraleedharan told TNIE that there will be action against Prasanth, besides an inquiry into the whole episode.
Prasanth was provoked by a news report which said that Jayathilak had submitted an adverse report against him to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Jayathilak reportedly raised serious allegations against Prasanth during the latter’s tenure as chief executive officer of ‘Unnathi - Kerala Empowerment Society’, an initiative for the welfare of scheduled castes and tribes.
He was accused of having taken government files under his personal custody. When queried on the topic, Prasanth returned only a part of the files to the minister’s office, Jayathilak’s report said. Further, the report said that Prasanth did not turn up at his office regularly. There were months when he was absent for up to 20 days, and he also manipulated attendance records and “other duty” was claimed in the name of non-existent meetings, the report said.
Taking to Facebook, Prasanth likened Jayathilak to a “self-proclaimed successor to the chief secretary post”. In his first post on the day, Prasanth explained his version of the allegations against him. He made another post saying that Jayathilak was serving as a “special reporter” to the daily which published the news report.
“I’m compelled to reveal some facts about senior IAS officer Jayathilak who prepares adverse reports against me and promptly submits them to the daily. I am forced to reveal some facts about him which the public should know,” Prasanth posted.
He added: “Though I don’t like discussion on government files in the public domain, I have no other option. I intend to reveal things that would be available under the Right to Information Act. He is a great person who himself proclaimed that he would be the next chief secretary. So, one should have fear and respect towards him.”
Prasanth also ridiculed K Gopalakrishnan, his successor at Unnathi, who complained about the missing files. In his Facebook post, Prasanth said there was a trend among IAS officers to commit some mischief and later complain against the same mischief, referring to the incident in which Gopalakrishnan allegedly formed a WhatsApp group for Hindu IAS officers.