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Bureaucracy to politics: A familiar career shift
Over the years, several bureaucrats and diplomats have earned their stripes, traversing the highs and lows of the power corridors
Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who was scheduled to demit office in August 2024, raised eyebrows when he announced his decision to step down as a high court judge to join a political party last month.
He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on March 7 and was subsequently announced as the party’s candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Tamluk in West Bengal.
Bureaucrats turning politicians is no longer a surprise or a taboo. There are several examples of bureaucrats opting to cross over to the rough and tumble of politics, but members of the judiciary have largely steered clear of electoral politics. There was an uproar when former Supreme Court judge Ranjan Gogoi was nominated by the BJP to the Rajya Sabha in 2020. He is now a nominated member of the Upper House who does not draw his salary as lawmaker.
But Gangopadhyay’s foray into electoral politics has been controversial, given his role in presiding over cases pertaining to the Trinamool Congress that he is now contesting against.
He is not the candidate from a non-political background that the BJP is banking on to meet the target of winning 370 of the 543 seats. The party has fielded former Indian ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, from Amritsar, a seat it has not won before. In 2019, former diplomat Hardeep Puri unsuccessfully contested from the seat.
The BJP has also fielded Debashish Dhar from Birbhum, who quit the IPS for politics, Pranat Tudu, a government doctor from Jhargram and Saket Misra from Shravasti in Uttar Pradesh, who opted out of the IPS for a career in financial services.
Over the years, several bureaucrats earned their stripes, traversing the highs and lows of the power corridors. In 2022, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking a “cooling-off period” of two years for retired judges of the top court and high courts before they can accept political appointments. There are no rules prohibiting bureaucrats from joining politics post-retirement and no requirement of a cooling off period either. However, government servants wishing to join the private sector must abide by cooling off for one year.
To be sure, the BJP is not the only party that boasts of former bureaucrats among its ranks. The Congress and other parties too have welcomed bureaucrats and diplomats on board.
Some well-known political faces that were once part of the coveted services include the late Ajit Jogi, who quit the IAS to join the Congress following the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s nudge and went on to become the first chief minister of Chhattisgarh. Former speaker Meira Kumar was a diplomat and took a plunge into politics in 1985, while Mani Shankar Aiyar, also a diplomat, joined politics post-retirement.
The BJP’s list includes names such as Brajesh Misra, who served as the National Security Advisor and Yashwant Sinha, who held the portfolios of finance minister and external affairs in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Two other former diplomats, S Jaishankar and Hardeep Singh Puri, are part of the Narendra Modi government as are former IAS officers RK Singh, Ashwani Vaishnaw and Arjun Ram Meghwal.
