Housing secy to reconsider decision to quit service

Gautam Chatterjee, principal secretary of housing department, who had applied for voluntary retirement from the service last week is likely to withdraw his resignation. Ketaki Ghoge reports.

Gautam Chatterjee, principal secretary of housing department, who had applied for voluntary retirement from the service last week is likely to withdraw his resignation.

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Sources in the state secretariat said chief secretary Ratnakar Gaikwad asked Chatterjee, a 1982 batch IAS officer, to rethink on this decision and convinced him not to resign.

“The chief secretary gave him a pep talk and he seems convinced,” said a senior bureaucrat on condition of anonymity.

Chatterjee was looking into crucial housing policy issues, including Dharavi redevelopment scheme, proposal for establishing a housing regulator and amending slum rehabilitation laws. Chatterjee did not deny that he had withdrawn his VRS application. “This is my personal decision, I don’t think it makes news.”

Last week, he had told HT: “I have been feeling that I have stopped adding value to the job. I also had an angioplasty last month, so would like to take it easy.’’

Sources in the state secretariat told HT that housing secretary’s job had only got tougher last year. “There has been a lot of negativity in Mantralaya after Adarsh scam. It has been difficult to get files cleared and one gets bogged down in such environment because allegations of some or the other scam are always doing rounds.”