CAT quashes move to stall transfer of IFS whistleblower

The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has quashed the decision of a Cabinet committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that could have stalled the inter-cadre transfer of whistleblower Indian Forest Service officer Sanjeev Chaturvedi.

Updated on: May 28, 2015, 23:35:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has quashed the decision of a Cabinet committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that could have stalled the inter-cadre transfer of whistleblower Indian Forest Service officer Sanjeev Chaturvedi.

Stating that a system where “honesty is punished and corruption is rewarded” cannot last long, the tribunal directed the government to re-examine his case in the next two months and asked Chaturvedi to approach the tribunal again if the justice was not done.

The Haryana cadre officer has sought transfer to the Uttarakhand cadre on grounds of “extreme hardship” and “relentless prosecution” merely because he opposed expenditure of public funds on private land for a herbal park in Haryana.

He had got consent from the Haryana and Uttarakhand governments for the transfer, a must requirement for the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) to consider a cadre transfer case. Chaturvedi’s plea was also supported by the environment minister Prakash Javadekar who recommended his case to the Cabinet Committee in July 2014.

Soon after Javadekar’s recommendation, the health ministry then headed by Harshvardhan sacked Chaturvedi as the chief vigilance officer of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) reportedly at the behest of JP Nadda, now health minister.

Chaturvedi had exposed corruption in AIIMS and sought inquiry against a Himachal cadre IAS officer. Nadda is also from Himachal.

The ACC took up Chaturvedi’s plea almost six months after the AIIMS controversy and rejected the environment ministry’s recommendation. It instead asked Chaturvedi to produce fresh no-objection letters from the two state governments for the transfer.

Chaturvedi challenged the committee’s decision on the ground that there was no requirement of fresh no-objection letters even though there was change of government at the Centre and the forest service rules does not provide for seeking second consent for inter cadre transfer.

While quashing the order the tribunal quoted Nobel Prize winner poet Rabindranath Tagore to describe the hardship faced by Chaturvedi. The government told the tribunal that it was willing to re-examine Chaturvedi’s case and the CAT gave government two months to decide on his case.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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