Saving Durga Nagpal: Why our parties stopped at posturing

While the IAS officer maintains a curious silence, the political grandstanding over her suspension has fizzled to a whimper because every party has a past

FirstPost, 10 August, 2013

It is two weeks since IAS officer Durga Nagpal was suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government and five days since the state justified its decision in a reply to the Union Ministry of Personnel. The outrage at the Akhilesh government’s move to punish an officer, who was taking on the sand mafia, on the pretext that she fanned communal tension created hope for prompt corrective action. While a few IAs bodies are still vocal, the political furore has been reduced to a whimper since.

If anything, this is not unexpected. The political grandstanding against the Samajwadi Party was not tenable because every party has in the past harassed inconvenient bureaucrats. In a corrupt system where the political class expects babus to be pliable bedfellows, it is naive to expect our leaders to break ranks for short-term political gains. But, to make sure they sound politically correct, they made well-meaning noises.

“We must ensure that the officer is not unfairly treated… this particular instance has highlighted the need to assess whether there are adequate safeguards in place to protect executive functionaries working beyond the average call of duty to uphold the rule of law.” Thus wrote Sonia Gandhi, in her capacity as chairperson of the National Advisory Council, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

It is two weeks since IAS officer Durga Nagpal was suspended by the Uttar Pradesh government and five days since the state justified its decision in a reply to the Union Ministry of Personnel. AFP

Fighting the sand mafia is certainly part of upholding the rule of law but how was that “beyond the average call of duty”? For that matter, what is the average call of duty of an IAS officer posted as an SDM? Do those who merely respond to their average call of duty deserve adequate safeguards? Gandhi did not elaborate on these nuances.

Alongside the righteous intervention of the Congress chief was the tug-of-war over the food security bill. Would Mulayam Singh Yadavsupport the bill in Parliament and hand the UPA its trump card for 2014? Would he hinge support on the Centre’s stand on the Nagpal issue? Or were the two issues unrelated, as Congress managers and the Samajwadi Party supremo insisted?

Two days after Gandhi wrote to the PM, Mulayam declared the suspension “final” and irreversible and indicated that he would back the food security bill, provided the UPA promised to protect farmers’ interests. For good measure, his party leaders argued that the Congress’s heart should have also bled for IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who was transferred for the 44th time after he cancelled the mutation of a Rs 58-crore deal between DLF and Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadrain Gurgaon and ordered a probe into all of Vadra’s land deals in the region.

Indeed, every member in the pro-Durga chorus — Congress, BJP, BSP, CPM — has skeletons of their own. IFS officer and whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi of Haryana, eventually rescued from harassment in the state and posted at AIIMS, continues to be a thorn in the flesh of the Hooda government as he demands a CBI probe into forestry scams that concerns, among others, the chief minister’s office. Former Gujarat top cop Sanjiv Bhatt, who has questioned Narendra Modi’s handling of the 2002 riots, has been under suspension for two years now, besides facing a flurry of cases.

BSP’s suspension of UP’s seniormost IAS officer Promilla Shanker in 2011, a day after she submitted a report on the Yamuna Expressway Authority pointing to irregularities in land acquisition and planning, was quashed by the Centre last year in an unprecedented intervention. The CPM’s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government in West Bengal had to pay senior IPS officer Nazrul Islama symbolic Re 1 cost for initiating an illegal vigilance inquiry against him. Not surprisingly, the same officer was handpicked by the Trinamool Congress before being dumped forraising inconvenient issues.

Evidently, the unrelenting media focus on Nagpal’s case brought together serial offenders to rally behind her. The facts of the case, however, remain blurry. A clutch of Muslim organizations back Nagpal, saying the case of an IAS officer taking on the sand mafia is being twisted into a religious issue. Another set of reports, however, quotes villagers saying Nagpal terrorized them into razing the structure built on contributions on gram sabha land. They argue that the demolition is being painted by the mainstream media as revenge by the sand mafia, ignoring the officer’s communal bent of mind.

Nagpal, however, has not contested the suspension order. She is yet to come forth with her version of the events, and the political tussle has already moved stage. In any case, it is unlikely that the cause of a bureaucrat, no matter how just, will spur political parties to review equations, especially ahead of elections. In the Samajwadi Party’s own perspective, it is only one regime’s Durga Nagpal against another’s Ashok Khemka or Sanjiv Chaturvedi.

A day after Sonia Gandhi wrote to him, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the media that “there are rules laid down and the rules will be followed”. Dr Singh should know the rules because he also heads the Ministry of Personnel that rewrote some of those rules last year. On 16 February 2012, V Narayanasamy, the PM’s deputy in the Ministry of Personnel and the chief central sympathizer in Nagpal’s case, issued a confidential note to the PMO saying the Centre had no jurisdiction to intervene to protect harassed officers even if they belonged to the All India Services.

Ever since, that blatantly illegal DoPT note has been the Hooda government’s sole defence against a CVC-recommended CBI probe into forestry scams flagged by whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi. Since May 2012, Dr Singh’s DoPT has sat on six letters from Dr Singh’s PMO seeking clarification on that dubious note. But of course, Sonia Gandhi’s yardstick of “beyond the average call of duty” doesn’t apply where the future of a Congress chief minister is at stake.