UGC secretary wants to go back to parent organisation

UGC secretary Akhilesh Gupta has sought repatriation within a year of joining the higher education regulator saying his services are "badly required" in his parent office to run the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

Updated on: Nov 14, 2013, 23:33:32 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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University Grants Commission (UGC) secretary Akhilesh Gupta has sought repatriation within a year of joining the higher education regulator saying his services are "badly required" in his parent office to run the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

Gupta in his letter to UGC chairperson Ved Prakash said the two missions under NAPCC launched by the Prime Minister in 2008 had faced a setback after he joined the commission a year back.

"My parent organisation (Department of Science and Technology) has been requesting me to come back to take over the major national programme. The department does not have any other officer who has domain expertise to handle such a mega programme of national importance," he said, in a letter to Prakash on Wednesday.

The official found the job of secretary UGC as very intense requiring sustained hard work both mental and physical.

"Of late, my intense long working hours and day to day involvement in the complex issues have started affecting my health to a great extend," the letter reads.

He also mentioned that his doctors have advised him not to strain too much and choose a lighter and less intense job as he was suffering from hyper tension and was diabetic for the last 10 years.

"The (ailments) could be fatal if I ignore these warnings and work the way I am expected to work in UGC," he said.

Confirming that he has sought repatriation on health grounds, Gupta told HT that many new initiatives were taken by him in UGC including filling over 100 vacant posts and initiation of e-governance project.

He, however, admitted that he had differences over some issues with the commission chairperson but did not elaborate.

Sources, however, said Prakash and Gupta were not getting along well and many in the commission felt that Gupta, who had come from science background, did not had expertise in diverse field of higher education.

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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