Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwl on Tuesday took to Twitter to express his disapproval at Prime Minister Narendra Modi being partial and bending law to allow the cadre change of UP cabinet minister and senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Shivpal Yadav’s son-in-law, but not letting him appoint him to appoint an officer on special duty.
Kejriwal questioned how he was denied the right to have a staff member of his choice when all chief ministers are allowed to have two personal staff members of their preferences. Kejriwal has asked for the deputation of whistleblower Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi – who was last year also conferred with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for fighting corruption – as an officer on special duty. While he had urged the Centre to provide him the services of Chaturvedi soon after taking oath in February 2015, he had earlier this month once again requested Modi to reconsider his request but again to no avail.
Kejriwal also retweeted a story that stated that Shivpal had written a letter to Prime Minister Modi seeking the deputation of his son-in-law, IAS officer Ajay Yadav, from one state to another and that Modi had overlooked objections by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to allow his deputation.
The committee, which is chaired by Modi and also has as a member the finance minister, had on October 28, 2015, “approved the proposal for the inter cadre deputation of Ajay Yadav from the Tamil Nadu cadre to Uttar Pradesh cadre for a period of three years on personal ground in relaxation of policy as a special case,” the report said.
The report also said that although the SP and the BJP are political rivals in UP, which goes to the polls in 2017, Modi went out of his way to oblige the influential leader.
Ajay, who is at present posted as a district magistrate in Barabanki in UP, is a 2010-batch IAS officer and belongs to the Tamil Nadu cadre. He had applied for a change of cadre with the DoPT. However, in May 2015, the department rejected his plea on the grounds that a minimum service of nine years in the parent cadre was necessary before a change could be sought. The department had also mentioned that the reasons cited by him were very ordinary and a cadre change could not be allowed on their basis.
Following this, his father in law, a cabinet minister in the Akhilesh Yadav state government, wrote a letter to the prime minister, seeking his intervention in the matter.
In his letter, Shivpal mentioned that it was in November 2014 that Ajay had sought a transfer to the UP cadre citing the ill health of his child and that he also needed to look after his mother following the demise of his father.
The Prime Minister’s Office then wrote to the department on August 25, 2015, mentioning that Shivpal had written to Modi on July 23 requesting a cadre change for his son-in-law. Interestingly, in the subsequent meeting on August 31, 2015, the department once again rejected the cadre change request and urged the ACC to not allow this posting.
Despite the department’s objection, Modi granted Ajay a three-year deputation in UP.
Sourced from The Indian Expresss, Featured image courtesy: www.ndtv.com
