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From the Editor

vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020 Anil Tyagi | editor GS Sood | business editor Sheshadri Chari | roving editor Abhilash Khandekar | consulting editor Alam Srinivas | contributing editor Vivek Mukherji | contributing editor Anish Gandhi | consultant, foreign affairs Rakesh Bhardwaj | editorial consultant Sumit Bothra | Regional Head, Tamil Nadu Ramesh Sharma | bureau chief (north india) Nipun Jain | finance Gautam Das | legal consultant Bushchat Media | edit & design Madan Lal | webmaster Abhisshek Tyagi | director advertising & marketing Anil Sood | vice president, marketing +919811639632 PS Sural | vice president, marketing +919873243950 e-mail: asps@gfilesindia.com up: Rajeev Anand | regional head +91884 023 9980 +91 99363 58161 rajeevanandvol@gmail.com delhi: e-mail: adv@gfilesindia.com mumbai: 48/C-1, Areshwar, Mhada, S.V.P. Nagar, Andheri(W), Mumbai 400 053 Chandigarh: Jangra Complex, Opp Hotel Ramade Plaza, Ambala Chandigarh Road, Zirakpur-140107, Punjab Mobile +917888591003 e-mail: rameshsharmaemail@gmail.com Anil Tyagi, Printer & Publisher 118, 2nd floor, DDA SITE-1, NEW RAJINDER NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110060 +All information in gfiles is obtained from sources that the management considers reliable, and is disseminated to readers without any responsibility on our part. Any opinions or views on any contemporary or past topics, issues or developments expressed by third parties, whether in abstract or in interviews, are not necessarily shared by us. Copyright exclusively with Sarvashrestha Media Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world. Reproduction of any material of this magazine in whole, or in part(s), in any manner, without prior permission, is totally prohibited. The publisher accepts no responsibility for any material lost or damaged in transit. The publisher reserves the right to refuse, withdraw or otherwise deal with any advertisement without explanation. All advertisements must comply with the Indian Advertisements Code. Published and printed by Anil Tyagi on behalf of Sarvashrestha Media Pvt. Ltd at Polykam Offset, C-138, Naraina Industrial Area, Phase I, New Delhi 110028. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts in New Delhi only

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his is another face of capitalism, albeit an ugly one. But it is as much an inherent part of the various moods and hues of ideology. Large companies, on the brink of bankruptcy, are trying to make last-minute deals to remain profitable, or survive. But if the logic of capitalism is that the government has no business to be in business, and the private sector should run to the policy makers to be bailed out, there is only one way – keep your head above the water, or declare bankruptcy. After the Supreme Court forced the telecom companies to pay their huge dues on revenueshare to the government, this is, in fact, the way forward for several reasons. The first is that this trend is not sector-specific. Across segments, and across sizebrackets, companies are in trouble. Some of the biggest names such as Jet Airways, DHFL, IL&FS, Bhushan Steel, Essar Steel, and several others declared bankruptcy, and were sold off – often at huge discounts, or haircuts on the outstanding loans. The same rules should apply in all sectors, and telecom cannot be any different. Let Vodafone-Idea fail if it has to. In future, even if the largest Indian enterprises are on the verge of loan defaults due to burgeoning debt, they should be allowed to fail, and then rise from their ashes like a phoenix. A recurring theme to prevent such failures and bankruptcies, or an excuse to ask for government bailouts, is that it is in public interest. If Vodafone fails, and Airtel is crippled, what will happen to the billion-plus subscribers? Let’s rephrase this question. When the Supreme Court cancelled 122 mobile licences in one go after the 2G scam, and dozens of large businesses had to shut shop, what happened to the subscribers? Nothing, they coolly shifted to other service providers. The same will happen this time. Under the new insolvency code, the lenders can find new buyers to rejuvenate Vodafone and Airtel, which is more crucial in public and national interest. Let us not forget that the telecom companies are to be blamed for the current problems. Two decades earlier, they agreed to a bailout deal with the government, and shifted from auction payments to revenue-share. And immediately, they tried to reap advantages of the new agreement by contesting the revenue-share percentages. It hit them like a hammer when the Supreme Court ruled that the government’s calculations were right, and the telecom firms had to pay the outstanding amounts, penalties on it, interest on the amounts, and penalties on that. The total amount, obviously, was whopping and unimaginably huge. In the process, the companies’ managements, boards, and auditors – deliberately, arrogantly, or stupidly – did not make any provision for these payments in the several annual balance sheets. Every company is bound to do that for a contested case. But the telecom firms were overconfident that they will win against the government, or the latter will bail them out as it had on earlier occasions. There is a ready case for shareholders’ action against these boards and auditors. Unless a balance sheet is clean, or at least, there is an attempt to do so, what is the point of such financial disclosure? This too is part of the various faces of capitalism that we mentioned earlier. The votaries of capitalism cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot ask the government to stay away, and not interfere with their operations unless there is an illegality. At the same time, they cannot run to the government to be saved from bankruptcy because of poor management decisions, unprofessional boards and auditors. Both shoes have to be on the same track; one cannot go right, and the other left. Shocked that the court’s earlier order was stayed by a desk officer in the government, Justice Arun Mishra, one of the three judges, said, “If this is not the outcome of money power, let me speak. This is not the way your officer should behave.” Anil Tyagi editor@gfilesindia.com

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

CONTENTS Cover Story

Surviving a financial storm 16 bric-a-brac Scindia hurt and angry; Struggling to make a mark; New CVC and CIC; Goyal is in a hurry bIRTHDAYs of civil servants

Tracking: Transfers & Postings

BY THE WAY Yogi lords over bureaucracy; Local body politics; Importance of sons-in-law; Running with lateral entry!

STATE SCAN

Land Mafia runs for cover

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CORRUPTION 61

The Twin Curses of Earth And Sky

GOVERNANCE

Miscued effort

GOVERNANCE

Rana Sugars: How they duped the investors

GOVERNANCE

‘Governance is an overarching concept with many dimensions’

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Tweets @IAS ASSOCIATION Inspiring thread. Stuff young IAS officers do in the field. Kudos @MJindal4 Quote Tweet Manuj Jindal @MJindal4 Feb 4 Transformation story #1 As I finish my 3 months in Bhamragad, #Gadchiroli, proud to share transformation of an old, dilapidated Tehsildar building into a sparkling, new training center in art and craft for #Tribal students. See for yourself Now training 36 PVTG students DC Ranchi @DC_Ranchi Jan 25 Received a citation from The honorable governor of #Jharkhand as the three best District Election Officer for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha Elections 2019 on National Voter Day by the Election Commission of India. Congratulations Team #Ranchi @ SpokespersonECI @ceojharkhand IAS Association @IASassociation Jan 27 So inspiring. The legendary Sukumar Sen, our senior in service, had the honour of conducting the first two General Elections in 1952 & 1957. IAS officers - from ECI, to State to Districts have been striving hard to keep up the legacy and ensure free & fair elections. democracy IAS Association @IASassociation Jan 27 So proud to see pictures of so many of our colleagues taking the salute at Republic Day

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and committing to the values enshrined by our Constitution and our Nation. We will be sharing some of these images on this thread. #RepublicDay #IAS IAS Association @IASassociation Jan 25 Congratulations to Shri Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi IAS for being honored with #PadmaShri for his literary achievements. From Arunachal, but his contribution to Assamese literature is huge. IAS Association @IASassociation Jan 25 Misbehavior and harassment of lady IPS officer in Manipur by uniformed personnel of Assam Rifles is shocking. We stand by our colleagues in Manipur and urge upon all concerned to cooperate with the SIT enquiry and ensure that justice is done. @IPS_ Association IAS Association @IASassociation Jan 23 We stand by our colleagues at MP IAS Association and strongly condemn the derogatory and disrespectful remarks against the DM and other officials of Rajgarh District Madhya Pradesh. #Dignity #RuleofLaw #RespectWomen @IPS Association The IFSA strongly condemns the incident of manhandling of lady IPS officer in Manipur and demands strict action against the culprits. @IPS_Association IPS Association @IPS_Association Jan 24 Congratulations IPS officers on being honoured

with @ECISVEEP Award in Security & Election management. Sri @DrAPMaheshwari, DG @crpfindia; Sri Anjani Kumar @CPHydCity; Ms Saayli Savlaram Dhurat, SP, Araria; Sri ML Meena, @JharkhandPolice. You all make us proud. @IPS_Association Jan 14 We welcome the introduction of Police Commissionerate system in Lucknow and Noida. It is a great opportunity for @Uppolice to serve the public even better. IFS Association @CentralIfs Project entitled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;eForestFire- Himalayan Forest Fire Predictionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for Arunachal Pradesh awarded with National Awards on eGovernance by @DARPG_GoI Congratulations Dr Abdul Qayum (IFS: AGMUT) & team (RK Singh, Pradeep Mishra, Firoz & @aryarakesh_mnu @ drqayumiitk @Pradeep80164164 @IncomeTaxIndia Feb 13 Certain misinformation is being circulated in Social Media pertaining to individual return filers. CBDT clarifies: During the current financial year, 5.78 crore individuals filed returns disclosing income of financial year 2018-19 @IncomeTaxIndia Feb 13 Replying to @IncomeTaxIndia In the ITRs filed by individuals in current financial year, only about 2200 Doctors, Chartered Accountants, Lawyers & such other professionals have disclosed annual income of more than Rs.1crore from their profession (excluding other incomes like rental, interest, capital gains etc)

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

Bric-a-brac movers & shakers

Scindia hurt and angry RS seat also appears elusive

yotiraditya Scindia is the angry young man of the Congress Party. Circumstances for him have taken a U-turn. Once he was considered a chief ministerial candidate for Madhya Pradesh but Kamal Nath and Digvijay jointly turned the tables against him and Kamal Nath took over as Chief Minister. Scindia had been annoyed with the party high command for past some time. Rahul Gandhi took him to Shangrila Hotel for dinner the day after Kamal Nath took over the reins of the state. Sources disclosed that Scindia pointed out to Rahul, you call me your friend and you took me with you to campaign in MP every where and when the question of selecting the chief minister came up, you chose Kamal Nath. He asked Rahul, you are my friend or my foe. Rahul Gandhi consoled him by assuring that he will be appointed as the President of Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee. Scindia was also miffed over the point that his name as the state PCC Chief has not been announced. Then Sonia Gandhi took the matter in her own hands and called an important meeting between Kamal Nath and Scindia wherein it was decided that Scindia will be sent to the Rajya Sabha from the seat that is going to be vacant from Madhya Pradesh. Now there is talk of Priyanka being selected for that seat. Sources disclosed that Scindia knows that Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh team will not allow him to be nominated by the party to Rajya Sabha, citing his recent anti-party behaviour. Scindia held a rally on the issue of loan waivers of farmers and recruitment of teachers and even claimed he will agitate against his own government if the demands are not fulfilled. “Let him do it,” was Kamal Nath’s answer to the threat. Wait and watch till April when the Rajya Sabha elections will be held and whether Scindia’s name appears in the list or not.

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Struggling to make a mark Nadda considers his options

agat Prakash Nadda, the Party President of the BJP, has a major task ahead in the reshuffle of office bearers. It is to be seen whether Nadda will have his own team or keep working under the shadow of Amit Shah. Nadda is not a mass leader and does not have much grip even in his home state of Himachal Pradesh but he is an experienced hand as he has been active since his student days in the RSS and Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad. The BJP has lost Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and recently Delhi. So, a change in office bearers is imminent to pump fresh air in the party. Ram Madhav, Bhupendra Yadav, Murlidhar Rao, Anil Jain, Arun Singh, and Kailash Vijayvargiya who are state in-charges but have not fought an election. Ram Lal who was the General Secretary of BJP till recently was transferred and BL Shantosh was brought in as General Secretary Organisation. Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, and Dr. Raman Singh, Uma Bharati appear on the party’s website as Vice-Presidents but they have been completely sidelined. Nadda is moving cautiously, but he is appears to be under pressure as he has again appointed the trusted lieutenant Chandrakant Patil as President of Maharashtra state unit ignoring former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Sources disclosed that Ram Madhav and Kailash Vijayvargiya are on the watch list of the BJP leadership and they may be allotted some other work. Nadda is being reminded by his well wishers that it’s Amit Shah and Narendra Modi’s party and he has limited options. The only consolation for Nadda is that he has very good equation with the Prime Minister and in any eventuality of an onslaught by Shah, he has a saviour in Modi.

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New CVC and CIC Selection meeting turns stormy

anjay Kothari, a 1978-batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre, Secretary to the President of India, has been appointed as the new Chief Vigilance Commissioner of India. The new Central Information Commissioner is Bimal Julka, a 1979-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre and former I&B Secretary. He is currently an information Commissioner. The 90-minute meeting to select the CVC and CIC was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah; MoS, PMO and DoPT, Jitendra Singh, Cabinet Secretary Rajeev Gauba and DoPT Secretary C Chandramouli. The selection meeting got into rough weather when it was found out that Finance Secretary Rajiv Kumar was also one of the 126 applicants who got shortlisted. Lone Opposition member Adhi Ranjan Chowdhury objected that Finance Secretary Rajiv Kumar, a member of the search committee, has “also turned out to be an applicant for the CVC and was finally shortlisted for the post of CVC by the search committee.” Besides Kumar, the members of the search committee were Gauba and Chandramouli. This is not the first time the Opposition has disagreed with the government of the day on the appointment of the CVC. In 2010, the selection of the CVC ran into a controversy after the Government decided to appoint the then Telecom Secretary PJ Thomas despite strong objections from the then Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj. Thomas’s appointment reached the doorstep of the Supreme Court which struck down his appointment in March 2011. The CVC post had been lying vacant for the last eight months. The outgoing CVC KV Chowdary, a 1978-batch officer of Indian Revenue Service, was reportedly an acolyte of former finance minister Arun Jaitley. It was alleged at that point of time that KV Chowdary was investigating the tapes of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and did not take any action on the evidence available with him.

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Goyal is in a hurry Pushes railway privatisation

iyush Vedprakash Goyal currently holds two important portfolios–Railways and Commerce–in the Government of India. He is an old RSS hand. His father Ved Prakash Goyal was also the treasurer of the BJP and has served as the Minister in Vajpayee government. He used to be in the loyalists group of the late Arun Jaitley but after the latter’s demise, Goyal has completely aligned himself with Amit Shah. He is also considered to be close to the most powerful industrialist of Mumbai. Goyal does not like the naysayers in the ministry. He is a man in a hurry. He wants to implement the privatisation agenda in the Railways with rocket-like speed but it is not possible without major changes in the administrative system of Railways. The former Chairman of Railways and Air India Ashwani Lohani handled the minister with care. There are proposals pending worth nearly Rs 2 lakh crore for upgradation of the Railways. Of this, approximately Rs 1 lakh crore pertains to modernisation of signalling. Goyal tried hard to make Lohani understand the move for a 4G signalling system, but with a mere 50 km railway track testing done in the world, Lohani did not want to put 67,000 km track at risk, so he kept the decision in abeyance. When the issue of Lohani’s extension came up before the CCA, Goyal put his foot down and VK Yadav was appointed as the new Chairman of the Railway Board. Yadav’s oneyear extension as Chairman gains significance in view of the restructuring exercise which includes trimming of the Board and the merger of its cadres. Yadav is his master’s voice. It’s to be seen in the next four years who will be benefitted by the privatisation, the common man or greedy industrialists.

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

Corruption

plundering resources

From Raj to Rafale 17

The Twin Curses

of Earth And Sky 10

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

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by Alam Srinivas

Some of the biggest scandals in independent India took place in the cases of illegal mining, stealing oil and gas from neighbouring interconnected reserves, gold-plating of projects, and sale of such precious resources at rock-bottom prices. If one includes telecom spectrum, which too is a limited resource, the circle of corrupt, cruel, violent carnage, cashing-in through human labour, and the twin curses of the earth and sky is complete.

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ook at some of unsavory global facts. There are possibly two dozen nations in the world that earn more than 50 per cent of their exports from oil and gas. None of them is a democracy. Even if some of these regions are part of the larger democracies, they are wracked by exploitation, corruption, resourcecapture by elites, and poverty. This is a classic counterintuitive theory. The more resources you possess, more you sell, the more the people suffer. What is crucial in this scenario is that huge wealth creation walks handin-hand with unbridled corruption, high growth rates coexist with low indicators of human development. Experts dub it as the phenomenon of ‘resource curse’. There are several associated trends: the ‘Dutch Disease’, whereby the higher exports of resources reduce competitiveness in other areas and; higher risks of civil conflicts within regions, and with neighbouring areas. Now look carefully at the map of India, the entire eastern corridor, central Deccan plateau, and a state on the

western border. These are swathes of land, which are rich in coal, minerals, and oil and gas. Sadly, these are among the states that are poor, lack growth and development, are immensely corrupt, and involved in decades of violence between the state and people. While India suffers from the “noresource curse”, i.e. resources contribute a minor percentage of exports, the ‘resource curse’ still exists. Some of the biggest scandals in independent India took place in the cases of illegal mining, stealing oil and gas from neighbouring interconnected reserves, gold-plating of projects, and sale of such precious resources at rock-bottom prices. If one includes telecom spectrum, which too is a limited resource, the circle of corrupt, cruel, violent carnage, cashing-in through human labour, and the twin curses of the earth and sky is complete. The ruling and wealthy classes made hay as the people suffered. During the colonial days, before coal, oil, and minerals were commercialised, a few agricultural commodities attained the status of natural resources because of their on-street value, and emerged as the areas of manipulations. In some of the earlier parts, we highlighted opium smuggling to China, and intense speculation in cotton that led to a crash of stock market, banks, and real estate in 1865. But there were two other products that aided the process of corruption and exploitation during the British Raj. These were indigo and tea, both of which were in huge demand in Britain. According to the Concise Oxford History of Indian Business, “The period between 1819 and 1825 witnessed an almost uninterrupted boom in

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

Corruption

plundering resources

indigo trade….” It earned huge profits for the firms in Calcutta until 1846, with intermittent crises. Speculation, malpractices, and exploitation of the farmers by planters, who owned land later, and middlemen, led to huge crashes in 1833 and 1846. According to Tirthankar Roy, these two episodes “finished many of these hybrid firms”, which overlapped between indigo and banking.

any Calcutta firms financed the indigo operations, and marketed the goods. Hence, as Roy puts it, they were largely trading firms with banking arms to repatriate profits and engage in lending-deposits activities. Any steep fluctuation in indigo prices, which is normal and common for any natural resource, led to huge bad debts. When conditions turned unfavourable in 1825, it bankrupted several firms. “Palmer & Co, the ‘Indigo King of Bengal’, held its own for some time” during this period, says the Oxford history. But when an abundant crop led to a huge fall in prices in 1829, Palmer & Co was “unable to meet the claims against it, and closed its doors for good”. This failure of the largest firm engulfed others over the next few years. “The 1829-33 crash ended the career of a generation of mainly European managing agencies”. However, just a decade-and-ahalf later, indigo turned out to be the villain again. And this time, it took down a serious and innovative business experiment in Indian-British partnership. Subsequent to the crash, and despite the failure of leading firms in 1829-1833, business in Calcutta revived. New players came into being and diversified from indigo to coal,

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opium, tea, sugar, and silk. According to Roy, “The most prominent firm of the time, Carr, Tagore, also started a bank, Union Bank. Dwarkanath Tagore (grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore) led the firm. However, Union Bank became deeply involved with the indigo trade, i.e. with firms in India and Great Britain that financed it. A continuous decline in indigo prices, coupled with “deep commercial crisis” in Britain led to the failure of dozens of mercantile houses there. “A large number of them had business connections with the Calcutta firms that were indebted to (Tagore’s) Union Bank,” explains the Oxford history. More firms closed in Calcutta in 1846; in one week, 16 houses collapsed. The bank lost heavily, aided by cases of “misappropriation, mismanagement, and misuse of a public institution for private gain”. Carr, Tagore never recovered. In 1861, another 15 years later, the colonial empire allowed the acquisition of wastelands in East India

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times over to speculators, who would already have formed a tea company ostensibly for commercial exploitation of the property. The shares of the company would then be sold in Calcutta and London. As the lands in question were far away from the actual places of transaction… the buyers of land, the promoters of companies, as well as ordinary investors were very often taken for a ride,” explains the Oxford history. By 1866, the structure of fraudulent schemes fell down like a house of cards. Investors scrambled to sell their shares at whatever prices

nomenal, and exploitation of communities immense. There were five issues involved: nexus between policy makers and Big Business, allocations at paltry prices with accusations of bribes and payoffs, ability of a politician to side-step the logic of collective consensus within the government, illegal operations, and gold-plating. Ever since mobile operations were introduced in the early 1990s, there were allegations of crony capitalism. Right from the first tender, certain companies were favoured by the government,

The entire eastern corridor, central Deccan plateau, and a state on the western border… are swathes of land, which are rich in coal, minerals, and oil and gas. Sadly, these are among the states that are poor, lack growth and development, are immensely corrupt, and involved in decades of violence between the state and people “on very liberal terms and held in perpetuity”. The aim was to encourage cotton cultivation, but it gave impetus to tea. But not before another scam hit investors and people. Companies acquired huge chunks of waste properties in hilly areas, which were suited for tea plantations. However, it paved the way for easy entry of dishonest entrepreneurs, speculators, and middlemen. “The modus operandi (of the scam) was simple. Someone with money… would purchase a piece of wasteland for a pittance, quickly clear it up, plant it with a few tea shrubs, advertise the property as a well-established garden, and then sell it at a price many

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they would fetch. Promoters and firms disappeared. The tea plantations continued to remain as wastelands. It was years before the tea industry recovered from this setback, and emerged as major resource-driven segment. In more modern times, such methodologies were adopted by companies that sold wealthy dreams about profits to be made from teak and eucalyptus plantations.

nly when the real natural resources were exploited, after India’s freedom at midnight, the phenomenon of ‘resource curse’ become visible. The scams were larger, money involved was phe-

obviously at others’ expense. Rules were twisted and manipulated, the courts gave differing interpretations, and the open tendering process was opaquely dismantled. Post-tender machinations became the rule, rather than the norm. Those who were ejected for different reasons at the beginning won the bids in the end. In telecom, apprehensive about the huge, unviable bids to grab the scarce spectrum, the government opted for revenue share in 1999. Two decades later, this turned into a huge controversy when the Supreme Court ruled that the telecom firms had grossly underpaid, and had to cough up a

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Corruption

plundering resources

massive `130,000 crore. It upheld that the percentage payments were applicable on entire revenues without any exceptions. Even non-operation incomes like dividends and interest had to be considered a part of overall revenue. A revenue-share formula in oil and gas sector was also turned on its head. In the 1990s, when the government leased out oilfields to the private sector, including foreign investors, the philosophy was profit-share, i.e. a fair share between the company and the owner after various costs were deducted. The logic was that since oil exploration was a high-risk business, and could lead to huge losses, the explorer had to recover its capital and other costs, and then share the resultant profits with the government. Clearly, this encouraged the private players to gold-plate their costs, i.e. show higher expenditure on paper compared to what they had incurred. The situation reached such laughable proportions that in many cases, the costs were so large that the government did not earn a single rupee until the last stages, when the fields were almost exhausted. The owner of reserves, who leased it out got crumbs and that too after 15-20 years. Only in recent times was the formula changed to real revenue-share. What was ironical is that during this long period when the private explorer recovered its costs, and the government earned nothing, the former used the reserves as valuation measure to sell a part of its stake to a willing buyer at a huge premium. This happened in several cases, and promoters earned billions of dollars, even as the government kept waiting. It prompted the likes of Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s Chief Minister, and Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer, to com-

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pare it to a situation between owner of a car, and her driver. At a press conference, they commented that this was akin to a situation where one hired a driver for a car, and the latter walked away with the vehicle. In oil and gas terminology, the government leased out the fields to a private party, which sold it. To be fair to the oil majors, a fairer comparison is to a house that’s purchased on a long 99-year lease. Although the owner is a lessee, she can still sell the house at the market rate. No one can complain as long as the new buyer realises that the property is on lease.

n the case of coal blocks, as also telecom spectrum, the natural resources were sold or leased out for a song. This was especially the case when coal blocks were allotted for captive consumption – for use in allied steel and thermal plants – during this century. CAG and others alleged that this was done in a non-transparent manner. For example, the government did not introduce the concept of competitive bidding, which was also true of telecom spectrum in the first decade of this century. In addition, politicians and ministers actively lobbied on behalf of some private coal players. The CAG maintained that some companies got acreages that had reserves much higher than captive requirements. Many companies sold coal in the open market, although the rider was for only captive purposes. In some cases, companies “squatted” on the coal blocks for years. They did not use them because they had no allied plants to consume. According to CAG, the notional loss for 194 blocks was `186,000 crore. Allocation of spectrum in the 2000s witnessed other twists and

turns, based as it was on “first-come, first-served” basis. One of the telecom ministers during the period, A. Raja, single-handedly rode roughshod over other ministers, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He negated the views and opinions of the ministries of finance, law, and PMO, and gave the spectrum in 2008 at inexpensive 2001 prices. According to CAG, the paper loss in this case, when compared to quotations from potential foreign investors, was a whopping `176,000 crore. Illegal mining is a bane for the country’s society and economy for decades. A 2017 NITI Aayog study found that in large swathes of areas, 99% of the respondents agreed that there was rampant illegal mining. The reasons too seemed obvious – ineffectiveness of the administration, corruption, and political pressures that encouraged illegality. Investigations in eastern states like Odisha found that some of the largest business houses were

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which is their representative, has the right to decide at what price they will be sold, to whom and in what quantities, and for what purposes. However, this is contrary to the situations in telecom, coal, and other minerals. In coal, the state-owned Coal India sells at notified prices, which is decided by an internal committee, “working with the central government”. However, a buyer can buy the resource in auctions and through imports, the prices of which are linked with global prices. In telecom, the firms are free to price their services for both voice and data. The price regulations in cases of several minerals, especially iron ore, do not exist.

Only when the real natural resources were exploited, after India’s freedom at midnight, the phenomenon of ‘resource curse’ become visible. The scams were larger, money involved was phenomenal, and exploitation of communities immense

involved in illegal mining over large normal mining and forests areas. The NITI Aayog study was done after the government introduced new laws to check illegal mining, and encourage legal activities. The use of technology to monitor the former has helped, but not curbed it. Even

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today, it is rampant and blatant, and the administration seems unable to check it. The procedure to mine and sell ill-gotten minerals is well established. There are subtle ways to show legal invoices to sell the illegal goods. The activities go up whenever China emerges as a major buyer, and global prices shoot up. But although the policy makers were lax, business community eager to earn the huge profits from corrupt practices, and the communities helpless, the role of judiciary was crucial. For example, in the case of the oil and gas sector, the Supreme Court gave an overriding judgment which said that the natural resources belonged to the people. Hence, the government,

he situation becomes more perplexing since, over the past few years, the Supreme Court has said that natural resources need to be transparently auctioned so that the government and, hence, the citizens, can maximise profits. If the resources are sold or leased freely according to demand and supply, how can the government regulate the market prices? If there are auctions to lease oilfields, why shall the government decide the prices of crude oil, and to whom it should be sold? In some ways, the ‘resource curse’ is inherent within specific societies and their main institutions. The latter work at cross-purposes, with little clarity, and create confusion and chaos. This leaves wide, open spaces for the politicians, civil servants, and businesses to exploit these gaps and enrich themselves in illegal ways. The courts react at the last minute, when the scams become public, and give knee-jerk orders. This was evident from the manner in which the apex court cancelled the licences in telecom and coal. g

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE corporate revival

Surviving a financial storm

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

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by Vivek Mukherji & Neeraj Mahajan

O Media baron Subhash Chandra had to fall back on the last resort of selling Essel Group promoter stake in November 2019 to save his jewel in the crown, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited from sinking under the debt burden of `11,000 crore. His fight back, though commendable, holds a cautionary tale for India Inc and promoters with overreaching ambitions who expended too fast, piggy backing on easy capital when the going was good. But when the economic slowdown triggered by the ill-fated demonetisation decision and dodgy financial practices came back to haunt the non-banking financial sector, trouble came storming at the doorsteps of these promoters www.indianbuzz.com

n November 21, 2019, at 9.15 am, media mogul, Subhash Chandra, must have felt like the skipper of a stricken ship who just spotted dry land after spending days and months enduring stormy seas that threatened to sink his overloaded boat. By noon that day, he docked his ship in the safety of the harbour and might have looked back at the raging waters over the dark horizon with a sense of remorse. After all, to save the ship, Chandra had to jettison the most precious cargo that he often referred to as the “jewel of his crown.” On that morning of November 21, Chandra made good on his promise to investors and the public through an open letter that his office released to the media in January 2019. The Essel Group, promoter of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL), sold 15.72 per cent stake to institutional investors through block sale at a share price of `304 when the scrip was being traded at `277. The sale of approximately 15 crore promoter shares helped the Essel Group raise `4,560 crore that it used pare down the approximately `11,000 crore debt that it accumulated against the pledged equity. Proceeds from the sale were utilised to liquidate a substantial portion of the high-value debt that was hanging like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the head of Chandra, which threatened the very existence of his first love: ZEEL. According to a CNBC report and Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) filings, lenders such as VTB Capital (`2000 crore), Birla MF (`750 crore), HDFC PMS (`550 crore), L&T Finance (`250 crore), and ICICI

Prudential (`270 crore) recovered their money. It’s reliably learnt that long-time investor in the Essel Group, Invesco Oppenheimer, Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Blackrock and SBI Capital purchased bulk of the shares along with a clutch of other institutional investors who acquired smaller stake. Chandra’s decision to sell family silver, which he accumulated painstakingly over the years, cost him his “jewel in the crown” as the promoter stake in ZEEL came down to a mere 5 per cent from a high of over 42 per cent, while the Essel Group’s encumbered holding came down to a mere 1.1 per cent. The only silver lining that remained following the sale was that there was no change in the top management as Punit Goenka was retained as the Managing Director & CEO by the investors. After the November 21 stake sale, Invesco Oppenheimer controlled 18 per cent of ZEEL, making it the single largest shareholder in the media company. Earlier on July 31, 2019, the Atlanta-based developing market fund bought 11 per cent of promoter’s stake for `4,224 crore. The proceeds from the earlier sale too were pledged to the lenders. Interestingly, Oppenheimer, despite being the largest shareholder doesn’t have a seat on the Board of Directors. After the two stake sales, a Essel Group spokesperson confirmed to gfiles that the outstanding promoter debt is below `500 crore from an alltime high of `11,000 crore.

The Letter

Chandra had already hinted in his open letter that he was left with no option other than liquidating promoter stake in ZEEL because of the

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE corporate revival

inability to service debt following the collapse of IL&FS. In the letter, a repentant Chandra acknowledged some of his bad investment decisions. He wrote: – Essel Infra: As most of the infra companies, even we have made some incorrect bids. In usual cases, infra companies have raised their hands and have left their lenders with nonperforming assets. But in our case, my obsession of not walking away from the situation made me bleed `4,0005,000 crore. Despite the loss-making projects, we continued to pay the interest and the principle by borrowing funds against our shareholdings in listed companies. – Acquisition of D2H: My recommendation made to my brother Jawahar Goel to buy D2H from Videocon was one more key error, which cost me and Jawahar both a fortune. – When our family business separation was implemented, as the eldest member of the family, I had taken the entire burden of the debts. I believe, it was my mistake to have told myself that “Subhash you can earn and repay the creditors”. Post which, most of my bets on the new businesses have not worked, which led to the increased debt due to added interest levels. – The situation at hand became further unmanageable after the IL&FS issue came to public light. Till then, we were managing our borrowings efficiently. The IL&FS meltdown stopped the roll overs, diminishing our ability to service our borrowings. – From May/June 2018 onwards a negative force which was acting against our grip as promoters became strongly active. This was followed by some anonymous letters being sent to all bankers, NBFCs, mutual funds, shareholders, etc.

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Proceeds from the sale were utilised to liquidate a substantial portion of the highvalue debt that was hanging like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the head of Chandra, which threatened the very existence of his first love: ZEEL – Whenever we reported some really good results from operating companies, share prices were intentionally hammered by these negative forces, driving away investors He also alleged that certain vested forces were working against the interest of the company and were instrumental in hammering down the share prices. “The mentioned negative forces, possibly after getting a hint of these positive meetings, have attacked the share price today, with a clear intention of sabotaging ZEE Entertainment’s strategic sale process,” he wrote. “I must also mention that there is no systematic protection against the insidious attack on us by the mentioned negative forces, but we will continue to seek the support of the system in order to thoroughly investigate the matter.” gfiles has reliably learnt that some of the high-profile non-media businesses of the Essel Group are also on the block. Foremost, Chandra wants to exit the infrastructure business by

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selling Essel Infra. It seems that Essel Infra is in talks with the Adani Group since August 2019 to buy out 305 mega-watts worth of projects. As and when the sale goes through, according to a company source, it is will fetch approximately `3,200 crore that will be utilised to pare down the operating debt of approximately `3,000 crore. Chandra is also hunting for buyers for the remaining 480 MW worth of solar power projects. As on December 2019, Essel Infra had 23 projects out of which eight are operational, five are under implementation and the remaining are in various stages of initial planning. Similarly, talks are on with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for offloading all the eight road projects that the infrastructure arm is executing. Though, the first round of attempted sale of three projects fell through.

handra ventured into the high-growth education sector with Zee Learn with a presence in 110 cities. The corporate website of the company describes it as: “Zee Learn is India’s leading company in education segment with the fastest growing chain of K-12 schools— Mount Litera Zee School and Asia’s No 1 chain of pre-school network— Kidzee in its portfolio.” According to Bloomberg-Quint report published in December 2018, quoting data culled from company filings, the Essel Group had 57.52 per cent promoter stake in Zee Learn as of September 2018. Out of this, 54.40 per cent with a market capitalisation of `626 crore was pledged. Multiple sources informed gfiles that Chandra was keen to exit the education business, which he expects to fetch `4,000 crore. But independent market analysts say that it’s a highly

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Companies under Essel World– Zee group News: Zee News, Zee Hindustan, WION, Zee Business, Zee 24 Ghanta, Zee 24 Taas, Zee 24 Kalak, Zee Bihar Jharkhand, Zee Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh, Zee Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand, Zee Odisha, Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal, Zee Rajasthan, Zee Salaam Media: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, Zee Media Corporation Limited, Daily News and Analysis & Pictures, & TV Technology: Dish TV, Siti Cable, Zee Turner Limited (50% with Turner) Entertainment: E-City Ventures, Pan India Network Limited – The online gaming company Playwin is a part of this group, Mumbai FC Packaging: Essel Propack Infrastructure: Essel Infraprojects Limited (EIL) – This group has started the amusement parks Essel World and Water Kingdom & Suncity Projects Precious metal: Shirpur Gold Refinery Limited (SGRL) – precious metal (gold and silver) refinery, fabrication of gold bars, coins and jewellery Education: Himgiri Zee University (HZU), Dehradun, Zee Learn Limited – A number of educational projects have been launched by this group. They include: KIDZEE & Mount Litera World preschools, Mount Litera Zee & Mount Litera World Schools, Zee Institute of Media Arts (ZIMA) and Zee Institute of Creative Art (ZICA) [9][10], ZeeQ, HZU Digi Next Education Pvt Ltd (Vigyaa) Charity: Ekal Vidyalaya, Global Vipassana Foundation, Transnational Alternate Learning for Emancipation and Empowerment through Multimedia (TALEEM) Research Foundation, EsselWorld-OASIS

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE corporate revival

optimistic figure. Whatever be the case, it is clear that the media baron wants to shed as much baggage as much possible through strategic stake sales in nonmedia businesses to ring-fence ZEEL from further financial shocks. While Chandra and ZEEL managed to avoid the bloodbath, following the economic slowdown that had set in by early 2018 and several high-profile business failures on account of unserviceable debt, like the IL&FS scam and Jet Airways going under, his narrow escape should serve as a cautionary tale for India Inc.

Riding the tiger

o learn the lessons from Chandra’s overreaching ambitions and its consequences, we need to rewind the story of the 93-year-old group that became a media conglomerate after starting out as a commodity trading firm called Rama Associates that was founded by his father. All his life Chandra wanted to do things big—starting the world’s largest packaging company; Asia’s largest amusement park (Essel World); and India’s first satellite television channel Zee TV. Of course, not to forget his illadvised foray into launching the first franchise-based cricket league called the Indian Cricket League (ICL) before the BCCI came up with the Indian Premier League. Chandra’s league rested on a weak financial model and had weak policing that made it a rich hunting ground for match fixers. In 1991, when the winds of liberalisation started sweeping across India, Chandra spotted a nascent opportunity to create wealth in the private cable and satellite television sector. Building on a modest start, he went on to create a sprawling television media empire that virtually had presence in

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gfiles has reliably learn that some of the high-profile non-media businesses of the Essel Group are also on the block. Foremost, Chandra wants to exit infrastructure business by selling Essel Infra every segment: from news to entertainment in various languages. His bouquet of offerings included some of the most popular TV channels like Zee TV, Zee Cinema and Zee 5, a video-on-demand digital service. It had a viewership of more than 120 crore people in over 174 countries across the globe. As the mighty czar of Indian television, he could win over hearts and minds and influence public emotions and opinion through around 90 odd TV channels in Hindi, 22 vernacular language (mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution) and 12 international languages. His businesses basket kept growing bigger as it included a newspaper chain (DNA), television networks (ZEE),

cable systems (Wire and Wireless Ltd), direct-to-home (Dish TV), satellite communication (Agrani and Procall), theme parks (EsselWorld and Water Kingdom), online gaming (Playwin), education (Zee Learn), flexible packaging (Essel Propack), infrastructure development (Essel Infraprojects Ltd) and family entertainment centres (Fun Cinemas). As it turned out, Chandra’s biggest flaw was that he made investments through a maze of close to 100 private and public companies into an extremely diverse portfolio, including in sectors in which the group had no core competence. His roster of investments included satellite and cable broadcast or OTT, movies, education, renewable energy, infrastructure,

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urban development, water management and solid waste business. To fund the expansion, he borrowed heavily by pledging promoter equity of publically listed companies. It seemed that Chandra was riding a tiger and didn’t know how to get off. While ZEEL remained highly profitable, even as rest of the television sector went through phases of slump, it was not enough to bear the weight of the ballooning debt burden. The infrastructure projects delivered the deepest cuts which bled the Essel Group profusely.

Talent drain

Sons & Brothers Sons

Punit Goenka Amit Goenka

Brothers

Laxmi Narain Goel Jawahar Goel

s the group sank in the financial swamp of its own making, it lost some of the best talent, especially in the media business. The DNA newspaper that was launched in 2006 amidst hype in Mumbai was eventually shut down in late 2019. The skeleton staff that continued to bring out the paper was informed about the closure through a front page ad that was inserted after the newsroom staff had put the paper to bed. They came to know about their fate the next morning. Apart from the DNA fiasco, the group saw the exit of some of its highprofile journalists and non-journalism staff. Uday Nirgunkar quit as the Editor-in-chief of DNA Newspaper and Channel Head of Zee 24 Taas to join News 18 Lokmat as Group Editor. Jagdish Chandra joined as the CEO of Zee Media Corporation Limited (ZMCL) and was tasked to manage Essel Group’s regional channels. These included Zee Sangam (Hindi), Zee Puraiyaa (Hindi), Zee Marudhara (Hindi), Zee Madhya PradeshChattisgarh, Zee Punjab, Haryana, Himachal (Punjabi and Hindi), Zee (Kashmir), 24 Ghanta (Bengali),

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Essel group family business:

Ashok Goel

– MD & CEO, Zee Entertainment Enterprises – CEO, Pan India Network, and CEO of Zee Entertainment’s international business

– Chairman, Suncity Projects: Manages real estate, film exhibition, oil distribution – Chairman, Dish TV: Manages cable distribution and direct-to-home business – Vice-chairman & MD, Essel Propack: Looks after packaging and amusement parks

Subhash Chandra with his younger son Amit Goenka (L) and his elder son Punit Goenka (R)

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Subhash Chandra with father Nand Kishore Goenka and brothers Laxmi Narain Goel, Jawahar Goel and Ashok Goel

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GOVERNANCE corporate revival

Zee 24 Taas (Marathi), Zee Kalinga (Oriya), and Zee 24 Gantalu (Telugu). Jagdish was also given the responsibility to take over as CEO of DNA. But three months down after being given responsibility, all his powers were curtailed and he was asked to quit as the CEO of DNA but to continue on the board of ZMCL. Likewise, Ashish Kirpal Pandit, CEO and Executive Director Zee Media, was asked to step down, while Zee Entertainment, executive vicechairman Subodh Kumar and Dish TV CEO, RC Venkateish, also resigned from their respective posts.

From rice to television

handra, a school dropout, is a self-made, first-generation businessman, who struck it big by relying on his native wit and streetsmartness, recognising and seizing business opportunities quickly. He was born into a Marwari-Bania family from Hissar in Haryana. Faced with a crisis to pay off a debt of `5 lakh owed by his father, he dropped out of school to join the family business as a trading and commission agent of rice. At the age of 19, Chandra and his brothers started supplying rice to the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Soon he set up a vegetable oil unit and Essel Packaging Limited in 1981. A few years later, Essel Packaging Limited was merged with a Swiss company called Propack A.G. Essel Propack Limited was born out of this merger. His first big commercial break came in 1983. FCI used to store grain in covered warehouses at that time. Chandra suggested the idea to keep the grain, covered by specially designed laminated plastic sheets, in the open. A hi-tech machine was imported from Switzerland, but it wasn’t much of a

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Media owners:

Their political aspirations and business considerations

edia owners in India are worse than chameleons. They shed off their skin, change colour and swing from one side to another – whenever it suits them. This is the mantra for their success is that they manage to camouflage or hide their feelings and emotions under a veil of secrecy – to shoot and scoot at their own sweet time and will. Billionaire Subhash Chandra—the founder of Zee TV— is no different. Known to be close to Modi, he chose to contest as an independent candidate but openly supported the BJP in Haryana and got a seat in the Rajya Sabha, in return. Again around the time when the GST Bill was being debated in the parliament, he wrote a letter congratulating the Prime Minister for his commitment, initiative and zeal to build a ‘New India by 2022. His book The ‘Z’ Factor was launched by Modi at his residence – 7 Lok Kalyan Marg. The editorial policies of Zee News, one of his subsidiary companies, often, aggressively supported the BJP to the point of being called the party’s unofficial mouthpiece. Well this went to an extent that Chandra had to himself appear Zee News and clarify that being “pro-India” does not mean being ‘pro-BJP.’ On January 2, 2016, a heavily armed group of terrorists attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station, a part of the IAF’s Western Air Command,

success. Almost 98 per cent of the first year’s production was lost in testing and calibration simply because of the absence of trained engineers and operators. As a result, engineers and operators had to be sent for training to Switzerland, leading to an unplanned hike in the cost of the project. In his autobiography, The Zee Factor: My journey as the wrong man at the right time, Chandra provides insights into his meteoric rise as an entrepreneur. One particular incident that he narrates in the book reveals how he navigated Delhi’s notorious labyrinth of power, using carefully

cultivated connections, to get things done. When he was still into commodity trading, he benefitted by becoming close to Dhirendra Brahmachari, who had the ear of Indira Gandhi. On one occasion, he bid for exporting rice to the erstwhile USSR under the rupee-rouble trade agreement. After a chance meeting with Rajiv Gandhi and his aide Vijay Dhar, Chandra complained how the godman was making huge monetary demands to get his work done. Rajiv brought the matter to the notice of the then Prime Minister that resulted in a meeting

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the government ordered a one-day ban and asked the channel to go off air for 24 hours for revealing “strategically sensitive” information in its coverage on NDTV India. This invited strong reactions in the media and politics. Many even called it an Emergency-like condition but Subhash Chandra decided to swim against the tide and issued a statement as the Chairman of Essel Group and Zee Media and Rajya Sabha MP, that this one-day ban was ‘too lenient’. Instead, he suggested that the government should mpose an indefinite or lifetime ban on NDTV for jeopardizing national security. However, when the government issued instructions for a probe on companies under the banner of Essel, Chandra changed sides and launched a counter-attack against PM Modi in his puppet media for indulging in ‘tax terror’. There was a time when newspaper owners, publishers and editors, mostly freedom fighters and people with ethics and morality, played a crucial role in the Indian freedom struggle. It’s time now that we sit back and ponder – if we need an impartial and unbiased media industry or turncoat owners who are – more invested in sensationalism, propaganda, business or politics than journalism. There is no law in India against cross-media-ownership. Instead we have media owners with multiple business and political interests. And they use their news platforms to further their own instead of public interest.

between Chandra and Indira at her residence late at night. Following that meeting, Chandra bagged the contract to export Basmati rice to the USSR. But the Soviets were not happy with the quality of the rice that Chandra was exporting because the previous supplier was apparently selling an inferior variety called Parmal. Chandra too followed suit and his rice was never rejected again by the Soviets. Needless to say, Chandra contributed generously to the Congress party’s coffers. Some years later, on a visit to Disneyland in the USA, he got a brain-

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wave to develop amusement parks. After returning to India, he set about buying acres of land in north Mumbai to build Essel World in the mid 1980s. The Essel World Amusement Theme Park claimed to be Asia’s largest amusement park (over 64 acres of land) at Gorai Island was the result. But his Essel World wasn’t much of a success. That made him to do something else. The germ of getting into the television sector was sown after the first Gulf War codenamed Operation Desert Storm became the first-ever televised war in the early 1990s.

CNN’s coverage of Desert Storm streamed reports, images and visuals of the war into people’s living rooms. People derived vicarious pleasure of seeing bombs raining destruction from the skies, cruise missiles blowing away targets, fighter planes taking off from aircraft carriers and night-vision devices added to the unfolding drama.

he Gulf War also opened up avenues for the use of technology for live coverage from the battle-front. This planted the idea in his mind to start Zee TV—India’s first private TV channel. That was a time when the television industry in India was solely monopolised by Doordarshan. The state broadcaster refused to let him hire a transponder. Chandra then approached AsiaSat in Hong Kong to lease one of their satellite transponders. But AsiaSat wasn’t impressed by Chandra’s credentials and demanded a higher price. He then approached Richard Li, Star TV’s founder and one of Hong Kong’s 50 richest billionaires. This resulted in a tie-up with Star TV to get a transponder and the setting up of India’s first private TV channel in collaboration with the Hong Kong- based Star TV. This was in 1992. When he came up with the idea to start Zee TV, it was a big gamble that could make or break him. His family, friends and well-wishers warned him to be careful, or else he might lose the small savings that he had accumulated over the years. His close friend and Zee’s co-founder, Ashok Kurian, cautioned him that it was akin to going to the Death Valley and expecting to come back alive. There were no private Indian broadcasters at that time. Even the government regulations were stacked against private television channels.

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GOVERNANCE corporate revival

The Indian government told him to shut the channel and warned him of dire consequences but Chandra refused to follow the diktat. As a result, he continued to burn almost `60 lakh a month for using the Hong Kongbased satellite transponder. Chandra was a man in a hurry. He then launched Dish TV and followed it up by setting up India’s first online lottery. After buying out Siticable, he started a joint-venture with News Corp before launching two new channels: Zee News and Zee

with the Dainik Bhaskar Group to take on the might of the Bennett Coleman-owned, The Times of India, in Mumbai. This led to one of the biggest and sustained newspaper battles in Mumbai. A few years later, Chandra took over management control of DNA, making it one of the fastest growing English newspapers in the country. But his newspaper business continued to bleed badly. It was ultimately shut down in late 2019. On May 24, 2016, Chandra stepped down as the chairman of ZEEL and

around 16 per cent of market valuation. It seems that the immediate trigger was news reports that the alleged links between the Essel Group, Nityank Infrapower and Multiventures were being probed by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) concerning deposits of close to `3,000 crore after the ill-fated demonetization was announced on November 8, 2016. The mayhem of January 25 caused Chandra to suspect foul play to hammer down the share prices with the intent of scaring away potential inves-

While ZEEL remained highly profitable, even rest of the television sector went through phases of slump, it was not enough to bear the weight of the ballooning debt burden Cinema within a year. In due course, Zee TV became the first cable company in India to launch internet over cable and Direct-to-Home (DTH) services in 2000 and 2003, respectively. This in a nutshell is how the Zee TV juggernaut rolled on to become a media behemoth and not just a pioneer in the media and entertainment industry. It was the first satellite Hindi channel that revolutionised the television watching experience in a short period of time. Chandra also launched the English newspaper, Daily News and Analysis (DNA), in collaboration

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also resigned from his post of Director and Non-Executive Chairman of the company to contest the Rajya Sabha elections as an independent candidate from Haryana. His candidature, however, was endorsed by the ruling BJP.

ven with the worst behind him, Chandra won’t be able to forget January 25, 2019, when Essel Group’s share prices crashed and wiped out a staggering `13,352 crore in market valuation in just one day. ZEEL lost over 26 per cent, Dish TV 33 per cent and Essel Propack

tors with whom he was negotiating at that time to sell promoter stake. It was this sequence of events that prompted the 68-year-old media baron to write the open letter to sooth the jittery nerves of the non-banking financial institutions, mutual funds and banks that had loaned money to the Essel Group against pledged shares. It’s expected that over the next year, Chandra and his team of close confidants will be consolidating the business and might even make attempts to buy back some percentage of the promoter equity that was sold to pare down the debt. g

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GOVERNANCE stockmarket fraud

Rana Sugars

How they duped the investors The GDR scam can be seen as an innovative way to bring back black money stashed abroad, and launder it as legal local earnings

by Alam Srinivas

he GDR (global depository receipt) scam, which was perpetrated by dozens of companies between 2002 and 2014, was as simple as it gets. Float a GDR issue—the amount raised is meaningless and can be a few million dollars. It is better if the GDR is listed in a not-so-prominent exchange like the Dubai International Financial Exchange. Before the issue, ink a deal with a single buyer to purchase all the GDRs. Arrange for a bank in a slightly shadowy nation to issue a loan to the buyer. Through a board resolution by GDR-issuer, assure the bank that the entire proceeds will be deposited as security with it until the loan is repaid. As payments are made to the bank in instalments, it releases the amounts to the issuer. According to the stock market regulator, SEBI, this straightforward, yet reportedly fraudulent, plan was allegedly hatched by Arun Panchariya “in connivance with different issuer companies and their promoters/directors”. At present, SEBI has pinpointed 59 GDR issues by 51 companies. One is likely to ask, what is the purpose of the fraud if the money comes back to the company, ostensibly after a delay of few months,

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and is invested in the operations that are stated in the GDR prospectus? Or, in a way, where are the irregularities if investors were not fooled or lost money? This is where it gets interesting. The reasons were fleshed out in a recent SEBI order on a similar case, which concerns a listed company, Rana Sugars that is owned by members of an erstwhile princely family, But before we get into the reasons behind the scam, let’s talk about the facts of this case. On May 15, 2006, Rana Sugars issued 2.45 million GDRs worth $18 million. Investigations revealed that Seazun Ltd was the sole buyer of the GDRs. Through an agreement that it signed with Banco Efisa SA on April 12, 2006, the latter granted a loan of $18 million to Seazun. As soon as Rana Sugars got the money from Seazun as GDR proceeds, it promptly deposited them with Banco Bank as security against Seazun’s loan. Further investigations found that these events were inter-linked. In its board meeting on January 31, 2006, i.e. months before the GDR issue, Rana Sugars passed a resolution “to authorise Banco Bank to use the GDR proceeds as security” against any loans that are taken in the future. Rana Inder Pratap Singh, the MD, was authorised to deal with Banco Bank. On May 15, 2006, he signed an agreement with the bank to make a deposit that wouldn’t exceed the loan that was given to Seazun to subscribe to the GDRs.

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GOVERNANCE stockmarket fraud

Clearly, this three-way deal was allegedly pre-planned and in connivance with the bank, buyer and the issuer of GDRs. Banco Bank lends $18 million to Seazun, which picks up all the GDRs, and the proceeds are kept as security with the bank by Rana Sugars. The money was debited from Inder Pratap Singh’s account in Banco Bank, or paid by the bank, in 21 instalments between May 23, 2006, and December 14, 2006. The amounts were regularly transferred to Inder Pratap Singh’s account in an Indian bank.

Arun Panchariya is a

Consul General of Liberia, according to the website arunpanchariya.com. It further says he has been appointed as Special Advisor on the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Ministry of State government of Liberia. Since July 2012, he has been heading the Consulate Mission of Liberia in Dubai. Before taking up his diplomatic position in 2012, Panchariya was a corporate financial advisor and an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, according to the website. His professional background is in the trading of direct equities, commodities, futures, derivatives and other market instruments and has offered advisory services to many governments on basic infrastructural development, says the website.

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ome of these transfers were small, $25,000 to $650,000. Some were large, $1 milion to $4 million. Hence, as Seazun repaid the loan in instalments, the bank transferred them. As the company argued, it received the entire GDR proceeds from the bank and invested them, as mentioned in the prospectus, in two sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh. Hence, there was no fraud or illegality, only a delay in the receipt of the money by a few months. No investor was harmed, no one lost money, and there were no complaints from any quarters. The SEBI Court did not agree. First, investigations showed that only $15.7 million of the proceeds were deposited in Inder Pratap Singh’s Indian bank account. An amount of $2.28 million was transferred to Seazun, and another $267,000 to Vintage FZE, a Dubai-based company. Although the SEBI order did not

say it specifically, these amounts may be “commissions” or “management fees” paid by Rana Sugars to Seazun and others to facilitate the deals. This is evident from other news reports. According to one of them, Vintage FZE was a company “established in Jebel Ali Free Zone, Dubai, and its founder-director was Arun Panchariya who, according to SEBI, is the alleged mastermind of the GDR scam.” His name is mentioned in the order on Rana Sugars. There are charges that he gave the idea to manipulate the GDR issue to the Indian promoter, and sometimes

Investigations showed that only $15.7 million of the proceeds were deposited in Inder Pratap Singh’s Indian bank account. An amount of $2.28 million was transferred to Seazun, and another $267,000 to Vintage FZE, a Dubai-based company

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On the issue that a violation occurs only if there is any impact on stocks or shareholders due to sham transactions, the SEBI order was clear. It said that Rana Sugars’ announcement that its GDR was fully-subscribed within a day—though done through unfair deals— “gave an ostensible impression to the investors and market about the strong potential of the company” arranged for the bank, and the buyer. There are reports that his family members are involved in stock trading in India. Whatever may be the reason behind the payments to Seazun and Vintage, the SEBI order said that the entire proceeds of the GDR issue did not come back. It was thus against the law. As the order stated, “The GDR proceeds ought to have been used for the benefit of the company and its shareholders.... There can be no two opinions that by diverting and returning the said amount...to Seazun, the shareholders...have been deprived of the money raised....” This had to be remedied, and the money had to come back. On the issue that a violation occurs only if there is any impact on stocks or shareholders due to sham transactions, the SEBI order was clear. It said that Rana Sugars’ announcement that its GDR was fully-subscribed within

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a day—though done through unfair deals—“gave an ostensible impression to the investors and market about the strong potential of the company”. The investors were “made to believe that the shares of the company have received an overwhelming response in the market abroad”.

hese, said the court, represented “fraudulent and unfair trade practice”, and led to “misleading inferences and false positive expectations”. Although the order didn’t get into the details of this aspect, such impressions and expectations were used later by Rana Sugars. When the GDRs were converted into shares, as they had to be, in a ratio of 1:10, the shares were sold to the Indian retail investors. One reason for investors’ interest was the successful GDR issue. Thus, the company ended up in a win-win situation. First, it sent signals to domestic

investors that foreigners were interested in Rana Sugars, and mopped up its GDRs within a day. Then, when the GDRs were converted into shares, the latter were sold to domestic retail investors. This was a fraud on “its own existing shareholders and also upon all the investors... who might be induced to deal in the shares of the Company due to the artificially created positive outlook about the Company’s performance”. This violated several provisions of the SEBI Act. Although the order did not clarify this, the GDR scam can be seen as an innovative way to bring back black money stashed abroad, and launder it as legal local earnings. Imagine the GDR buyer to be the promoter’s benami firm. So, the owner’s money is used to buy the GDRs, through a bank loan to stagger repayments. When the GDRs are converted into shares, they are sold to Indian investors, and the promoter keeps the proceeds. g

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

State Scan

madhya pradesh crime

a i f a M d Lan runs for cover by Abhilash Khandekar

With the Kamal Nath government cracking down hard on the land mafia in the state and the mafiabureaucracy-politician nexus in tatters, for the first time there is a ray of hope for homebuyers and plot holders

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adhya Pradesh has never seen such a sustained and coordinated crackdown on organised, white collar crime since the state came into being in 1956. Of course, there have been sporadic and selective campaigns against mafias, particularly land-grabbers, under previous governments but they evoked more cynicism than trust in the stateâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s people. Razing down of the illegal Raj Tower in Indore under Digvijay Singhâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rule or Minal Residency of Bhopal under the Shivraj Singh

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government may have earned public encomium for the previous chief ministers but the actions proved a flash in the pan. Land mafias were not deterred by such limited demolitions. The mafia-bureaucracy-politician nexus continued to thrive. Kamal Nath is the first Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister who seems seriously intent upon breaking the nexus. The sustained anti-mafia operations since November last year have not only generated public admiration in his sincerity of purpose but have also narrowed a trust-deficit in the official machinery working under him. The Chief Minister had to patiently bide time for political situation in Madhya Pradesh to get favourable enough for him to crack the whip. When he took over as Chief Minister 14 months ago, his detractors in the ousted BJP cast serious doubts on Kamal Nath’s understanding of the state, its people and the issues he was supposed to grapple with. The tag of ‘an outsider” was bandied about as a serious handicap for the new Chief Minister. The suspicion was not without basis. In his four-decade long parliamentary career, the nine-time Lok Sabha member from Chhindwara preferred backroom manoeuvrings in the national capital over rough and tumble of grassroots politics in Madhya Pradesh. However, as he tightened his grip on the administration gradually, the ‘outsider’ tag has stood him in good stead. Being an outsider, Kamal Nath did not indulge state’s mafias—be they realtors, illegal sand minors, adulterators or education sharks. Unlike a majority of top politicians of Madhya Pradesh, both in the Congress and the BJP, the Chief Minister, by and large, stayed away from patronising organised

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Kamal Nath

The sustained antimafia operations since November last year have not only generated public admiration in his (Kamal Nath’s) sincerity of purpose but have also narrowed a trustdeficit in the official machinery working under him crimes. That distance from the mafias has lent the Chief Minister adequate moral courage and political will to declare a sustained and non-partisan war on white collar criminals. His nononsense image has generated awe in the bureaucracy too.

mboldened by the political master’s unambiguous message to act tough against mafia, the bureaucracy has begun to deliver. Nowhere in the state is the combined might of the administration against well-entrenched land mafia more evident than in Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh. Land is costliest in Indore. Unsurprisingly, costly land has spawned a sanctuary for real estate sharks. Greedy and well connected private land developers and real estate operatives made a killing in the 15 years of the BJP rule at the expense of the poor and gullible homebuyers. Shivraj as Chief Minister for 13 long years made a lot of noise about exterminating the mafia but barring a jail term to the notorious Indore realtor Booby Chhabra, the land sharks had it easy under the BJP rule. In May 2010, the then Chief Minister handed over possession certificates to the genuine land owners after the administration freed the land from encroachers. However, it was just a

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State Scan

madhya pradesh crime

one-time show. Shivraj was apparently conscious of the political risk of antagonising his fellow party man and Indore’s “Bhai” Kailash Vijayvargiya. It is alleged that the BJP national general secretary and his cohorts have a finger in every pie in the dark underbelly of Indore. Vijayvargiya has allegedly built a parallel empire, leveraging his position over three decades. He has been Indore’s mayor, a powerful minister in the Shivraj government for 10 years and now a trusted ally of the union Home Minister Amit Shah. Holding lucrative departments such as PWD, Urban Administration and Energy in Shivraj cabinet for close to 10 years, Vijayvargiya has had ample opportunities to interact with leading land realtors and other intrepid entrepreneurs. Most such businessmen owe their phenomenal rise in the real estate to a great extent to Vijayvargiya’s patronage. This is reportedly cited as the reason for the BJP leader getting enraged as the Kamal Nath government started tightening the noose around the land mafia.

he controversial BJP leader was caught on a video threatening Indore’s ADM and other anti-encroachment officers of dire consequences on January 5. He was seen threatening that if RSS leaders were not in Indore at that time he would have set the city on fire. The RSS, led by its chief Mohan Bhagwat, was busy confabulating on its future course of action in Indore at that time. The incendiary statement not only betrayed the BJP leader’s ties with the land mafia but also drew fierce criticism nationwide. The police booked him for disturbing peace with an intention to cause riot. Vijayvargiya’s fury is understandable,

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Kailash Vijayvarghia

Emboldened by the political master’s unambiguous message to act tough against mafia, the bureaucracy has begun to deliver. Nowhere in the state is the combined might of the administration against well-entrenched land mafia more evident than in Indore, the commercial capital of Madhya Pradesh though not justifiable. Many in Indore, who owed their quickly acquired financial muscle to Vijayvargiya’s overt and covert support, are absconding due to police pressure. His Man Friday and MLA, Ramesh Mendola, is a known friend of Booby Chhabra and he himself has huge stakes in real estate business. However, the Kamal Nath

government seems in no mood to yield to Vijayvargiya’s, or for that matter, any body’s threats while carrying out relentless operations against mafia raj. For the Congress government, annihilating land mafia in Indore is politically expedient too. The Chief Minister is aware that Indore is a BJP citadel which he needs to breach for the Congress to strike roots. He used

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sexual exploitation of young women at his hotel ‘My Home’ to largescale illegal construction to threats held out to people and extortions from businessmen. Indore Municipal Corporation demolished his four big buildings as they were constructed on encroached land. Soni is carrying an award of Rs 1.20 lakh on his head. Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatagi appeared for Soni in the Supreme Court which upheld the Madhya Pradesh government’s contention that heinous crimes of the extortion and mafia activities are filed against the accused and, therefore, his plea should not be entertained. This is the first time the state government showed courage to lay hands on Soni.

Shivraj Singh Chauhan

all panoply of administrative devices under his disposal to assess the situation before he ordered a massive crackdown on land mafia. The operation began with unprecedented and mid-night swoop on the empire of Jitendra Soni alias Jitu. One of the two most notorious Indore personalities—the other being Booby Chhabra—Soni is into many businesses; he is a newspaper owner, hotelier, night club and bar proprietor besides land grabber. His evening newspaper Sanjha Lokswami carried leaked videos of a disgraced former minister and a powerful bureaucrat in the previous Shivraj government. The crackdown on Soni’s citadel coincided with publishing of obscene audio and videos which were part of the vast material the police had seized in the operation that came to be known as

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honey-trap scandal. The sleazy videos were seized from five women in September last year after their attempt to blackmail an Indore municipal corporation engineer backfired. As the police went for Soni’s jugular, his crimes surfaced with amazing rapidity. Accused in 56 FIRs against him, Soni is absconding while his son Amit is in jail. The police teams are on a hot pursuit of Chhabra and Soni, who is rumoured to have fled to Nepal. Soni and Chhabra have been friends but engaged in two different types of crimes related to land and buildings for close to three decades. Chhabra is the son of a local Congress politician. Soni’s petition urging cancellation of 56 FIRs against him was rejected by the Supreme Court on February 3. The FIRs were lodged against him by Indore police for various crimes—from

eal estate sharks like Soni and Booby have proliferated in other towns of Madhya Pradesh too, though they are not as big as the duo. Cancerous growth of land mafia is deeprooted. In Bhopal, Vijay Shrivastava was arrested with 21 cases against him lodged by the police. Shockingly, successive collectors, SPs, revenue commissioners and cooperative department officials chose to turn a blind eye to myriad complaints against land sharks. Obviously, the nexus of bureaucrats-politicians –mafia swayed over them. The officers thought it more lucrative to become a cog in the welloiled wheel. The victims of the nexus, of course, were gullible land and homebuyers. They fell for the chicanery of the land sharks and invested their life’s saving to buy a piece of land, dreaming a house of their own. They trusted cooperative housing societies that have mushroomed in all major cities over the decades as urbanisation picked up speed. However, instead of providing solutions to the growing housing

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State Scan

madhya pradesh crime

demands, the societies turned into dens of corruption and litigation. Chhabra, for instance, was controlling more than 20 such cooperative housing societies, having plots in thousands in different colonies of Indore. This scam came to light after a raid was conducted at a locked premises in Indore and several bags containing documents were unearthed. It is these victims of deceptions whose plight the Kamal Nath government has embarked upon to address. Thousands of lower and middle class citizens are now seeing a ray of hope with the Chief Minister handing over land-related documents to the genuine land owners. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is a dream come true,â&#x20AC;? a beaming Rajendra Kumar and Ms Nisha Garg said. They were among the 767 beneficiaries from seven cooperative housing societies who have been restored ownership of their land to them. At a public function to mark the Republic Day, the Chief Minister first hoisted the national flag at the Nehru Stadium in Indore and then proceeded to distribute land ownership certificates to those who had

Jitendra Soni

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almost given up hopes of ever possessing their plots of land in their lifetime. Within a month, Indore collector Lokesh Jatav and his team dug up massive amount of records that showed illegal transactions and encroachments of real estate dealers. As the first phase of certificate distribution took place, more and more victims came up with old land documents. There are 3,000 more such cases waiting to be disposed of in Indore alone.

error of the land sharks was so massive that individual plot holders were being fleeced by cooperative housing societies for more than 35 years. The mafias went about their dubious operations with impunity owing to their collusion with bureaucrats and politicians. The plot owners kept running from pillar to post to seek justice that remained elusive. The modus operandi for gobbling plots by sharks in the garb of housing societies was simple. Gullible plot purchaser would pay money to the coloniser who, in turn, would deny possession on the piece of land. The coloniser

Booby Chhabra: Arrested

would resort to two deceptions. One, he would not get the official registry of the plot done on the pretext that some government permission was yet to be secured. Second, the coloniser would refuse to develop the entire colony citing paucity of funds. Thus, large tracts of open land remained undeveloped in Indore city alone and its rates hit the roof. This has been a pattern in most big cities. In many cases, litigations ensued but the misery of plot holders remained un-mitigated. There are no drainages, electricity lines and roads in such colonies. Moreover, illegal encroachment of open land by musclemen has added to the plot ownersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; woes. Multiple registries of the same plot are not uncommon as

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assembled in hundreds complaining against colonisers who had not honoured the commitments. This is going on all over MP. During the public hearings, it transpired that the Indore Development Authority (IDA) too cheated people by announcing its own housing schemes. It acquired land but did not start development.

The operation began with unprecedented and mid-night swoop on the empire of Jitendra Soni alias Jitu. One of the two most notorious Indore personalities—the other being Booby Chhabra—Soni is into many businesses; he is a newspaper owner, hotelier, night club and bar proprietor besides land grabber the official investigation revealed. As a result, the coloniser procrastinates in developing large tracts of land to make it habitable. Significantly, most of the over 500 housing cooperatives functioning in Indore have changed hands many times. The original presidents or

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secretaries of the societies are missing. Plot holders with insufficient land documents are left high and dry. On the Chief Minister’s directive, the district collectors started organising public hearings to address the plot holders’ plight. Victims of the mafia

rs Urmila Modi, a widow, is among thousands of home aspirants who were cheated by land sharks. She says her husband Khyaliram Modi, wanted to build a small house on a plot bought from Mahatma Gandhi Grih Nirman Society. “He waited for 30 long years but could not get the plot of land during his lifetime. I am hoping that at least now I can get a plot of land for my children”. PS Dixit, 86, a retired vice principal of the famous public school Daly College, has a similar tale of woes to tell. “Pushpavihar Colony was launched in early 1980s and I bought a plot in 1985. Later, the Scheme 171 was announced by the IDA and more than 1,200 plot holders were denied permission to build houses,” recalls Dixit. The octogenarian is still waiting for his possession and building permission. The IDA did not build a single house, nor did the present coloniser who bought the colony from someone else. Like Dixit, another plot holder in the colony, NK Mishra says, “BJP government gave us unending mental torture but now we are grateful to Kamal Nath for bringing in a new legislation in December which would deal with such arbitrary IDA schemes.” By enacting amendment in Town and Country Act in December 2019, the Congress government has raised hopes among potential homebuyers as well as plot holders. g

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE defence cds

Miscued effort We have got it all wrong; Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Chief of Defence Staff is a self-deceiving exercise

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

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by Brig V Mahalingam

he government release on the appointment of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) issued on December 26, 2019 says the CDS will be of the rank of a four-star General with salary and perquisites equivalent to a Service Chief. He will also head the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), to be created within the Ministry of Defence (MOD), and function as its Secretary. Apart from listing out the areas to be dealt with by the DMA headed by the CDS, the mandate of the DMA and the functions of the CDS as Permanent Chairman of the Chief of Staff Committee (COSC), all of which boils down as responsibilities to be shouldered by the CDS, the notification goes on the say, “The CDS, apart from being the head of the DMA, will also be the Permanent Chairman of the Chief of Staff Committee. He will act as the Principal Military Adviser to Raksha Mantri on all tri-Services matters. The three Chiefs will continue to advise RM on matters exclusively concerning their respective Services. CDS will not exercise any military command, including over the three Service Chiefs, so as to be able to provide impartial advice to

the political leadership.” The responsibilities listed in the release are more than 35—involving the Army, Navy, Airforce and their headquarters, the Territorial Army— works relating to the three services, procurement exclusive to the Services except capital acquisitions as per prevalent rules and procedures, jointness in procurement, training and staffing for the Services, establishment of Joint/ Theatre Commands, promoting indigenous equipment by Services, tri services organisations, of which cyber and space will be a part and will be under the command of CDS, etc. He will be a member of the Defence Acquisition Council chaired by Raksha Mantri, Defence Planning Committee chaired by NSA and Military Adviser to the Nuclear Command Authority. He is expected to bring about jointness in operations, logistics, transport, training, support services, communications, repairs and maintenance, etc., of the three Services. He will bring about reforms in the functioning of three Services aimed at augmenting combat capabilities of the Armed Forces by reducing wasteful expenditure In addition to the above, the

Department of Defence issued an Order transferring a laundry list of 419 works along with two Joint Secretaries, 13 Deputy Secretaries/Directors, 25 Under Secretaries and 22 Section Officers with supporting staff to the DMA.

An analysis of the government release and the order raise the following questions:

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Were the Kargil Review Committee and the country demanding the establishment of CDS to perform and shoulder responsibilities listed in these two documents?

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One of the aims of establishing the CDS was to provide a single-point military advice to the government besides take prompt decisions and actions in the midst of a war in a digitised environment—as during Kargil war, the advice provided by the Army and the Air Chiefs to the government were contradictory resulting in a delay of 13 days for the government to take a call on the employment of Air Force causing considerable avoidable casualties to the ground forces. In this connection, the remarks of the 36th report of the Standing Committee on Defence (2008-2009) (14th Lok Sabha), Ministry of Defence, Status of Implementation of Unified Command for armed Forces is relevant. Why have we violated Parliament’s directions?

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GOVERNANCE defence cds

In light of the fact that the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) has no command and control authority over the Services other than his own, the Committee has expressed surprise on whether such a system will prove efficacious enough to ensure quick response and coordinated action in emergent situations. Considering the fact that the key to success in modern day warfare operations is the ability of the different wings of the Armed Forces to integrate their efforts under a single command without any loss of time, the Committee has opined that the creation of an additional post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to act as Chairman of the COSC is essential to ensure optimum level of jointness among the different wings of the Armed Forces and to provide single-point military advice to the Government. The Committee, has also recommended that till such time the post of CDS is created, the Government may take steps to give appropriate authority to the Chairman COSC in the present setup to command and control the resources of the Defence Services whenever the situation so demands.”

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The Parliamentary Standing Committee in their report has expressed their doubt that since the Chairman COSC has no command and control authority over the Services other than his own, if the present system will prove efficacious enough to ensure quick response and coordinated action in emergent situations. In fact, they have suggested an interim measure to be adopted till such time the CDS is created. When the system of Chairman of the COSC has failed, why bring in that even after creating the CDS?

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Since the CDS is not to exercise military command and the Service Chiefs have been mandated to advice the RM “on matters exclusively concerning their respective Services” only, who out of the four is expected to advice the RM during operations involving more than one Service? To be able to provide realistic assessment and suggest appropriate action not just the Chiefs but their operational staff too will have to be in the full know how of the operational situation. That implies the operational staff of all the services being in the operational loop. Is that possible?

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If the CDS is to provide advice in war situations, what practical advice relating to the course of action to be adopted based on the existing ground situation can he suggest to the Government in the midst of the war in a digitised battlefield, if as per the Government Release the “CDS is not to exercise any military command, including over the three Service Chiefs, so as to be able to provide impartial advice to the political leadership”. In war situations under these directions, the CDS will be clueless on the actual military situation on ground, enemy’s potentials and thus will be unable to give any meaningful advice. At best he can seek information from the Service Chiefs in the midst of the operations, paraphrase them and render them as his own advice to the Government. What if the advice of the Service Chiefs opining on their respective Service is contradictory to one another?

Do we want this? For the uninitiated it may be stated that during the course of the war vital decisions on areas such as timing and stage forwarding of reserves, launching counter penetration / counter attack actions, transtheater move of forces and their employment, the need, aim and the timings for launch of counter thrust, etc., which have serious implications affecting the success or failure of operations will have to be taken at short notice and acted upon.

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The government release says “CDS will not exercise any military command, including over the three Service Chiefs, so as to be able to provide impartial advice to the political leadership.” What does this mean? Are we trying to say that in war situations our military commanders act in the interest of the Service rather than the country?

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If we go as visualised, the political leadership will be burdened with advice from five sources, namely, the three Service Chiefs, the National Security Advisor (NSA) and the bureaucracy. Do we still want a repeat of Kargil?

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In a war situation, shouldn’t the highest political authority, which in India’s case is the Prime Minister, receive military advice directly from the military commander in charge of operations rather than from the Raksha Mantri who would have received Military advice from five

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What have we created in the name of CDS?

What we have done is to position yet another senior officer of the rank of General, coined an organisation called DMA under him and dumped on him responsibilities other than those which he needs to attend to, to prepare the Defence Services for a future war

different sources as stated above and is possibly confused?

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The release says the first CDS within three years of his assuming office will bring about jointness in operation, logistics, transport, training, support services, communications, repairs and maintenance, etc., of the three Services. An impossible task. Three years is too short a period. Obviously, the authors of the document are unaware as to what all such a direction involves. In my perception based on Chinese

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and US experience, it may take anything from 15 to 20 years for the changes to be effected.

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CDS who has no stakes in the military operations has been tasked to establish Joint/Theatre Commands. In an operational situation, from whom is the Theatre Commander expected to take orders or seek advice from? Army Chief, Navy Chief or Air Chief or from the non-operational CDS? Military operations cannot be piloted under such ambiguous command and control set up.

We have not created the CDS to prepare India’s Defence Forces to fight an integrated Joint Operations in a digitised environment. Instead, what we have done is to position yet another senior officer of the rank of General, coined an organisation called DMA under him and dumped on him responsibilities other than those which he needs to attend to, to prepare the Defence Services for a future war. Since he has been kept at the level of a General like in the case of other Service Chiefs with no authority to exercise military command over them, it will be left to the discretion of Service Chiefs to implement orders issued by the CDS pertaining to integration or training to be imparted to their personnel or on other matters connected to war fighting.

here has been a growing demand for inducting Defence Services officers in the MoD at the decision-making level so as to ensure better synergy and understanding between the Civil and the Defence Services. Instead, we have managed to create a separate Department within the MoD to be headed by the CDS as its Secretary. The Service Headquarters continues to work as ‘attached offices’ under the MoD. The spirit of the Kargil Committee’s Report does not seem to have been understood.

What is Required?

Under the present structures the views of individual Service Chiefs will have to be heard and given due consideration in an operation where more than one service is involved. This requires time and meeting of the three Chiefs with no clarity on who will be

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE defence cds

in charge of conducting the operations. Such consultations might have been possible when the operations were slow moving with very limited information available about the enemy. But in an informed digital environment where speed of decision and actions are vital to pre-empt enemy actions to gain the initiative, operational priorities and actions cannot be left to the choice of individual Service Chiefs or decided by voting. Joint operations under the present system can only go through if there is consensus amongst the three Chiefs. This needs to change.

he answer lies in appointing Theatre Commanders who will be responsible for conducting operations in their respective Theatres. Command and Control of forces will be linear and the present vertical chain will have to go. CDS will then be responsible to lay down the operationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objectives based on the political directives issued to him and after due consideration of the overall situation in all the Theatres. Trans-theatre movement of troops and resources will be decided by him in consultation with the Theatre Commanders and the government and its implementation coordinated. If we adopt the system suggested, we will not be doing anything different from what the major military powers of the world have implemented.

The Digitised Environment and its effect on Military Operations In a digitised battlefield system consisting of net-worked command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and counter C4ISR capabilities, a network interlinks weapon sys-

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

The CDS will be responsible to translate the political aim of the government issued in the form of directives to the military, spell out military tasks to the Theatres, evolve broader strategy for the operations in consultation with Theatre Commanders and decide on operational priorities and allocate resources tems, aerial platforms, surveillance, and communications systems, allowing the exchange of vast amounts of realtime information of the enemy and the capability to communicate that information to all forces in near real time. The system provides the capability to employ weapon systems mounted in various platforms of different Services with minimum delay.

Under such conditions, military operations on a broad front will unfold in the format of simultaneous operations on land, maritime, airspace, electromagnetic, space and cyber battle space dimensions, as considered necessary, probably timed appropriately. Such operations will incorporate various entities of war fighting such as missiles, armament support, and the three

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Services besides various battlefield systems which embraces intelligence, reconnaissance, communications, Electronic Warfare (EW), cyber, space, etc., trans-regional mobility will be an essential part of the strategy to meet the requirement of resources in such fastmoving battle conditions. After the operations have commenced, targets that come up while the operations are in progress will have to be dealt with instantaneously by allocating resources which are most appropriate considering the target and its location irrespective of which service owns them. Networked weapon systems allow employment of weapons at the press of a button. The massing of fire power at the point of decision instead of forces, from widely separated weapon platforms and assets of all the fighting forces will be the norm of the future. In a nutshell, operations in the said environment will be fast moving requiring the resources of all the Services including the non-contact war tools such as Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), Cyber and Space, to be employed in an integrated manner.

The Role of CDS

The CDS will be responsible to translate the political aim of the government issued in the form of directives to the military, spell out military tasks to the Theatres, evolve broader strategy for the operations in consultation with Theatre Commanders and decide on operational priorities and allocate resources. Based on information that unfolds during the operations, the CDS in consultation with the Theatre Commanders will be responsible for making changes to operational plans and effecting such changes. He should have the authority to decide on

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switching of forces from one Theatre to the other based on priorities and the prevailing operational situation. Other than operations and operational logistics, all other issues including Human Resources Development (HRD), must be handled by the Service Chiefs and the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

he CDS will be responsible for structuring Headquarters of the CDS, Theatre Commands and all other subordinate static Headquarters such as Area Headquarters all of which will be tri-service organisations. The Static Headquarters will cater for the needs of all the Services. Barring the headquarters of the three Services, training establishments of individual Services such as Regimental Centres and Record Offices and all other establishments will be tri-service so as to avoid each Service having its own establishments. The present logistic organisations and chains will have to be replaced by a Logistic Corps capable of handling logistic requirements of all the Services. This will need time. Training of officers at all levels to handle the new war methodology will have to be undertaken and to that end concerned training establishments will have to be restructured and their training syllabus modified. Priorities for procurement of equipment to meet the needs of the Services will be decided by the CDS based on larger military strategy.

Logistics

The present system of each Service having its own logistic arrangements and chain will need to change. There is a need for a Logistic Corps to replace the present system with independent status like the other Services to manage logistics both in peace as well as

in operational areas. It will be an integrated Service, trained to meet the logistic requirements of all the Services. While procurement and movement of commodities including creating and stocking maintenance areas as required between places of procurement or storage to the Theatre will be the responsibility of the Logistic Corps, their movement beyond the theaterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s logistic establishment to forward troops will be that of the Theatre Commanders with manpower and transport being provided by the Logistic Corps.Â Change in Logistic set up will result in huge saving in manpower.

Conclusion

The two documents structuring the CDS have probably been created by the bureaucracy without any practical knowledge of war fighting or understanding of future war. The consideration has probably been to ensure no loss of turf to the Service Chiefs, status, clout, authority, power and order of precedence to the bureaucracy and to keep the services happy by creating one more senior officer besides generating a number of chain vacancies all around. The need to structure compact organisations that will reduce manpower and at the same time bring in integration and efficiency amongst services has been given a go by forgetting that reduction in manpower is not achieved by cutting one man here and one there but by thoughtful restructuring. The CDS is a vital appointment in the military structure to prosecute war. Parochialism or keeping people pleased cannot be a consideration while formulating policies affecting national interests. The entire issue needs to be handled professionally, based on professional considerations alone. g (Courtesy ; Indian Defence Review)

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE

vice-president sardar patel

‘Governance is an overarching concept with many dimensions’ Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu, while delivering Sardar Patel Lecture on Governance at IC Centre for Governance on January 24, 2020, stressed upon unity of the country and enumerated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s efforts in achieving this

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Namaskar!

am delighted that the ‘IC Center for Governance Sardar Patel Lecture on Governance’ is being held at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Conference Hall at Upa-Rashtrapati Bhavan. I welcome you all to the official residence of the Vice President of India. It gives me immense pleasure to deliver this lecture at this conference hall named after the great son of the soil, the unifier and the Iron Man of modern India—Shri Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Firstly, let me remind every Indian that each one of us owes a huge debt of gratitude to Shri Sardar Patel for unifying India into a single territorial entity by spectacularly bringing about the merger of more than 560 princely States with the Union of India at its most critical point in the country’s history. Had he not displayed vision, firmness, pragmatism and tact in nipping in the bud even the remotest thought of a few princely States to remain independent or join Pakistan, India’s geographical contours would have been totally different. He was a great unifier who integrated the country and defined its geographical identity. In this context, it is pertinent to recall that the

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accession of Jammu & Kashmir to the Indian Union by Raja Hari Singh was without conditions. As such it is irrevocable and final. Another aspect is that Article 370 was only a temporary provision and had outlived its purpose long back. With the abrogation of Article 370, the Union Territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh will witness all-round and faster development. It was our good fortune that Shri Patel was entrusted with the most challenging assignment during India’s turbulent time and the country found the man of the moment in him. It undoubtedly was one of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century. Patel knew that India was under foreign rule because of a lack of unity. Pointing out that our mutual conflicts and internecine quarrels and jealousies in the past had been the cause of our downfall and falling victims to foreign domination several times, he had cautioned “We cannot afford to fall into those errors or traps again.” Nothing mattered more than the interests of the nation for Shri Sardar Patel. Apart from ensuring the territorial integrity of the country, he had conceived and created the administrative steel-frame, All India Services, to provide people-centric governance.

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GOVERNANCE

vice-president sardar patel

Dear sisters and brothers, Shri Patel wanted postindependent India to stay united without any narrow considerations and divisions based on caste, creed, religion or language. With a clear vision for an efficient administrative system, he wanted the civil servants to maintain the highest standards of probity and efficiency and strive to uplift the conditions of the poor without any fear or favour. Addressing the Probationers of the first batch of Indian Administrative Service, Sardar Patel said, “The service will now have to adopt its true role of national service, without being trammelled by traditions and habits of the past”. He was equally keen to ensure that the governance system empowers the rural India and protects farmers’ interests.

s you all are aware, governance has been an enduring subject of discussion among practitioners and laymen alike for many years now. As I see it, governance is an overarching concept with many dimensions and institutional and political manifestations. Conventionally understood, governance is the way the state and its various institutions negotiate and mediate with people, markets and civil society, through laws, policies, regulation and finance. The concept of governance has grown beyond the conventional definition. The process of governance is increasingly influenced by market forces as well as civil-society processes and citizen initiatives. The discourse on governance has grown as a parallel discourse to that of civil society, human rights and globalization. It also provides institutional and legal interfaces through which citizens mediate and interact with the state and seek accountability. A just, people-centred and inclusive growth approach seeks to transform political and governance

processes. Its purpose is social transformation through the realization of rights to all people, and political transformation to challenge unjust power relationships within and among institutions at the national and local level. Has the degeneration in moral and social values in the society led to a general decline in the functioning of our public services at every level? There needs to be an honest introspection at every level to arrest the declining standards. It should be always remembered that people have to be at the centre of an effective and just governance system. It must necessarily aim at empowerment of all people in an inclusive manner by providing a transparent and efficient institutional framework and the rule of law. The right to information is likewise an essential prerequisite for a robust, informed public debate through which decision-makers become answerable to their people, and rights-holders are enabled to assess public and private sector conduct. Just governance is about ensuring that those vested with authority are not allowed to become corrupted by their power. Just governance holds decision-makers accountable for actions or omissions. It, therefore, can help foster public trust in institutions and the integrity of public officials, while injecting greater accountability into decision-making. I feel that it is imperative that a movement of ethics is initiated at all levels in governance of the country. Corruption is a major canker and has to be relentlessly fought at every level. It is said that corruption skews growth and development, affects the economy, deepens poverty and increases inequalities. It sustains informal power structures. In this era of Information Technology, corruption

Article 370 was only a temporary provision and had outlived its purpose long back. With the abrogation of Article 370, the Union Territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh will witness allround development and faster progress

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can be best compared to a computer virus. The hardware looks the same; the software generally works, but some part of it gets “corrupted” and you find yourself in danger of losing the whole system. Like the virus, corruption may be invisible, small, contained to a few people, but like the virus, its mere existence in an organization puts everything at risk. We have to declare a total war on corruption which has to become a people’s movement. I think the system of governance adopted by our constitution makers and national leaders after independence has substantially stood the test of time. It is reflected in the national and political stability and has also, to an extent, aided in the development and economic progress. One can reasonably conclude that the system is capable of managing change from time to time, as observed in managing the economic reforms in the last two decades, and in making progress in many key development sectors. That is not to say that the system is perfect or that its functioning has been without any defects. I am only saying that the system, if followed honestly and efficiently, is capable of taking care of the problems of the people. Also, in my view, there is no other

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system of governance more suited to the plurality of our country. The same, however, cannot be said at the level of institutions and the processes in government. Perhaps, we need Process Reengineering in governance. We don’t have to change the system, as is being suggested in some quarters, but we have to make the system work better.

n the last few years, several administrative and legal reforms were initiated to bring in transparency and accountability. They include measures to curb corruption, unearth black money, and promote ease of doing business and speedy delivery of services to the beneficiary in a hassle-free manner. In view of increasing globalisation, there is a need to take action against economic fugitives who should not find any safe havens anywhere in the world. There should be greater cooperation at the international level. Various countries must not only exchange information but also enter into extradition treaties. The United Nations must take the lead in this regard. The implementation of Insolvency and Bankruptcy

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

GOVERNANCE

vice-president sardar patel

In the last few years, several administrative and legal reforms were initiated to bring in transparency and accountability. They include measures to curb corruption, unearth black money, and promote ease of doing business and speedy delivery of services to the beneficiary in a hassle-free manner

Code was another important reform undertaken by the government. Promoting the use of IT for the delivery of services is equally important to control corruption and ensure transparency. Everything should be online so that people need not stand in line. Direct Benefit Transfer through JAM (Janadhan-Aadhar-Mobile) is a fine example of the use of technology to eliminate bogus beneficiaries and check corruption. The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi’s threeword mantra of ‘Reform, Perform and Transform’ seeks to bring in total transformation in all walks of life. A responsible citizenry, honest political class, ethical bureaucracy and a vibrant judiciary will help India to become a role model for others. Public institutions are at the heart of governance. Good governance thrives on good institutions. To deliver public services, we have a number of public institutions. The overall performance of the government can be judged by an aggregation of performances of these public institutions.

t should be remembered that in a rapidly changing world, public institutions cannot remain rigid. They need to suitably change their ways of functioning to meet the mounting aspirations of the people. We have to do away with lot of outdated and time-consuming procedures and increasingly use IT to promote transparency and provide efficient delivery of services. What we need today is effective implementation of laws and policies. The bureaucracy must take the lead in the transformation of institutions. These institutions must be instruments of effective and efficient delivery of public services and socio-economic development. They should have credibility and competence. The integrity of the governance institutions is

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

very essential. They should be transparent and accountable in respect of everything they do. In the rapidly changing 21st century, it is critical that state institutions are agile, adaptable and resilient. The bureaucracy must become more pro-active and ensure that there is no gap in the intent, execution and delivery of various services to the people. Various transformative policies and programmes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padao, Ayushman Bharat, Goods and Services Tax, ‘Swachh Bharat’, ‘Makein-India’, ‘Digital India’, ‘Start-up India’, and ‘Skill India’ are aimed at accelerating the progress and empowering people. We can accomplish the desired goals only if we have a robust governance system and there is an unflinching commitment to excellence at every level. Taking a leaf out of Sardar Patel’s life and the extraordinary mission accomplished by him, I would suggest that we focus on strengthening programme implementation; on building up the competence and credibility of institutional structures and adopting a work ethic that keeps the national interest at the top and public welfare at its core. People need to develop a positive outlook and not become cynical. Everybody, particularly the youngsters, should be constructive and not destructive or obstructive. Through a collective endeavour, all Indians must work together for ushering in Gandhi Ji’s Ram Rajya, where there is all-round inclusive growth without poverty, fear, corruption, discrimination, inequality, illiteracy and hunger. Every citizen must strive to protect the unity, safety, security and sovereignty of the country. I am sure that all those involved in delivering public services will rise to the occasion and strive to make India one of the best countries in the world in providing citizen-centric governance. g

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BOOK EXCERPT

non-fiction autobiography

There’s Seven For You, Three For Me ‘Maaro, maaro,’ came the frenzied yells from the rear courtyard. Looking down from the rear window of the upstairs room, we saw the back door open. The police were running in the fields, the crowd giving them a spirited chase. Many of them had dropped their rifles and lathis. We were horrorstruck! The police had well and truly abandoned their posts and had left us at the mercy of an enraged politician and his blood-thirsty goons.

by Ajay Mankotia

y book There’s Seven For You, Three For Me–Chronicles of a Taxman was launched on November 27, 2019. I am a former Commissioner of Income Tax and have offered a sneak peek into the life and work of the taxman. The objective is to demystify the taxman. I have based the book on my varied experiences in the tax department. The book has received outstanding reviews so far and is doing very well. It was featured in the Bhopal Lit Fest. I am mentioning some excerpts of the book to give a flavour of what it contains. *** Not long thereafter, we heard a loud sound growing louder by the minute. We were with P upstairs going through the books at that time. The thunderclap was approaching the house from the front side. In the courtyard, the policemen stood in huddles wearing frowns and tightening their grip on the rifles and lathis. The pit in our stomachs started ringing alarm bells of foreboding. We didn’t have to wait for long. Cries of ‘Hai Hai’ and ‘Murdabad, Murdabad’ reached our ears before the crowd appeared at the front gate. School students stood at the gate

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***

carrying out their deathly chants. They carried sticks and chains. The gate stood no chance. It yielded meekly and the crowd stormed in. ‘Ab aap logon ke saath kya kiya jaye?’ P jeered. The atmosphere in the room had turned menacing. The team members’ faces had turned ashen with dread! We requested P to intervene in the matter. Stopping the raid through use of force would be counter-productive and illegal, we tried to reason. But our entreaties fell on deaf ears. He was a man possessed and showered us with the choicest abuses. Before we could react, a massive uproar came from downstairs.

A change of government took place when I was in the CBDT. The new Finance Minister was being felicitated in the quadrangle inside the North Block. The program started at 4 pm which was to be followed by tea and snacks (which were already placed in boxes). There was a dais with senior officials, few rows of chairs for officers, and standing space for the staff. All the staff turned up which I found to be most pleasantly surprising. Nothing would please the new Minister more than to see an unending sea of faces stretch out all the way to the back. I was to learn the reason why an hour later. When the first speech began, the crowd was all ears. They clapped with gusto when it got over. Then the second speech began, then the third, and so on. The enthusiasm began waning and by 4.45 pm; the crowd had got restless. They spoke

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

BOOK EXCERPT

non-fiction autobiography

“

Shashi Tharoor has this to say 'Ajay Mankotia’s collection of stories offers a rare glimpse into the surprisingly colourful experiences of the officers in the Tax Department, through an array of anecdotes that are in equal parts entertaining and farcical. Through these entertaining chronicles of the taxman, the reader is invited into a world peppered with absurdity, humour and intrigue; and, ultimately, a highly readable and inimitable account of the travails of the tax department in India.’

“

to each other loudly, they fidgeted and stopped clapping. Speeches were falling on deaf ears. Then the vote of thanks was announced, and the mood became somewhat upbeat. A very strange phenomenon was noticed by me. The crowd was subtly moving towards the rear, somewhat like a receding tide. As soon as the speaker requested the gathering to partake tea and snacks, all hell broke loose. Within seconds, every packet on the table and every reserve packet kept behind was snapped up—in twos and threes and fours. There were arguments, there was jostling, there was foul language, a fisticuff or two. And then the crowd vanished to their bus stops. Left behind were shell-shocked newcomers like me, an amused hardened crowd of veterans, and a new Minister who had just been given a demonstration of what had motivated the men to come out in large numbers and who were now part of his fiefdom. It’s a good thing that tea and snacks had been kept separately on the dais for him and the senior officers. If the Minister went back to his chamber in

a shocked state, at least he didn’t go back hungry! *** By 1992, I had already spent ten years in the Tax Department. Though words like ‘evasion’, ‘concealment’, ‘avoidance’, ‘colourable devise’ were usual in our day-to-day work, the word ‘scam’ entered the tax lexicon for the first time during those days. And the word would become part of our professional lives for the next four years. Our Chief Commissioner, in the editorial he wrote for the departmental magazine—Aayakar Bharati —put the Scam in perspective. Noting that the JPC, in its concluding paragraph had stated that it had come across various instances of close nexus between prominent industrial houses, banks and brokers, he invoked Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter and observed that the system had failed to notice certain connections, certain collaborations and connivance. Did the system eat up the beings as the Walrus and the Carpenter did to the poor Oysters?

This is what Jug Suraiya writes "Ajay Mankotia narrates with verve the real-life adventures and misadventures – often hilarious, sometimes hazardous – a veteran taxman faced over a career spanning 26 years. A thoroughly enjoyable read."

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The director had worked with him in the past, with outstanding results, and had acceded to his request. ‘You must see the movie; my son has done a great job,’ he tells me. He presents me with the music CD of the film. The topic then shifts to a music function he had attended. He is very bitter that the filmmakers don’t receive any royalty for songs of their films sung live on stage, even though singers are paid handsomely for the songs. ***

To understand the Scam in its complete details, the five officers dealing with banks were tasked with getting a thorough knowledge of the working of the RBI, the stock exchanges, the capital market, and the government securities market. We were deputed to the concerned institutions. We went through the Janakiraman Report and the JPC reports, as and when they were released, with a fine-tooth comb. We also studied the relevant laws on the matter (the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956; the Banking Regulation Act, 1949; the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934), as well as the various instructions, circulars and guidance issued by the relevant institutions. Having thus equipped ourselves with both facts and law on the Scam and the concerned institutions, it was time to put the knowledge to use. We had to establish whether, and to what extent, the banks were involved in the Scam. The other issue was that

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even if the banks were involved, were there any tax implications? *** A very well-known director is also covered. Initially he is very upset because he’s been felicitated by the Tax Department a few weeks earlier for being an ideal taxpayer. He feels, rightfully he thinks, that he should be immune from a raid. But if the Investigation Department gets information that not all income has been declared, a felicitation does not come in the way of a raid. As the raid progresses, he mellows down and is cooperation personified. I meet him and his sons in the evening. He is very humble, earthy, and loquacious. He’s just finished producing a film, directed by his son, and speaks to me about the experience. A former superstar, who was then having a lean patch, had approached him requesting for a role when the film was being conceived.

Anand-Milind did a show with a galaxy of singers in the mid-90s. In one of the duets they presented, they graciously agreed to let a senior tax officer’s wife do the honours with Udit Narayan. She was a classically trained singer, so they had no problem. There had been no rehearsal with her, because the request was at the last minute. It was a popular song, ruling the airwaves. Now, a person with classical training requires selfdiscipline not to introduce kan, meend, andolan, gamak, murki or other ornamentation into a commercial Hindi film song which has no need for it. But our lady did not have that self-control. She converted the chartbuster into a semi-classical song. The beat also slowed down. Anand immediately rushed to her to take it easy. But she wouldn’t be deterred. Udit, entirely uncomfortable and out of his depth at the turn of events, whispered into her ears a few times but in vain. The music directors and Udit gave up after that. The crowd booed and whistled their disapproval but it didn’t matter. We all heard the ‘ghazalised’ version of a pacy, frothy song. Only the Tax Department could pull it off ! g

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

birthdays IAS officers’ birthdays Feb 20, 2020 — Mar 19, 2020

IAS officers’ birthdays Feb 20, 2020 — Mar 19, 2020

J Nivas

Sanjay Kumar Singh

Barun Mitra

Ashish Gupta

CADRE: ANDHRA PRADESH

CADRE: Bihar

CADRE: MANIPUR

CADRE: RAJASTHAN

jnivas.ias2010@ias.nic.in

sk.singh@ias.nic.in

mitrab@ias.nic.in

ashishgupta.raj@ias.nic.in

Bandana Preyashi

Mukesh Kumar

Ajeet P Shrivastava

Katru Ram Mohana Rao

CADRE: Bihar

CADRE: JHARKHAND

CADRE: MADHYA PRADESH

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

bpreyashi@ias.nic.in

mukeshkumar.ias09@ias.nic.in

sajeetp@ias.nic.in

raokr3.up@ias.nic.in

Rajesh Sharma

Teeka Ram Meena

Ravindra Pratap Singh

Salim PB

CADRE: Himachal Pradesh

CADRE: KERALA

CADRE: ODISHA

CADRE: WEST BENGAL

rajeshsharma.hp@ias.nic.in

meenatr@ias.nic.in

rp.singh@ias.nic.in

bsp@ias.nic.in

Amit Meena

RA Rajeev

Raj Kamal Chaudhuri

Wazeer Singh Goyat

CADRE: KERALA

CADRE: MAHARASHTRA

CADRE: Punjab

CADRE: HARYANA

amitmeena.ias11@ias.nic.in

rajeevra@ias.nic.in

rajkamal96@ias.nic.in

wsgoyat.ias03@ias.nic.in

Afsana Perween

Sushil Kumar Patel

Arvind Kumar Poswal

Chandan Sinha

CADRE: KERALA

CADRE: NAGALAND

CADRE: RAJASTHAN

CADRE: WEST BENGAL

afsana.perween@ias.nic.in

sushilkpatel.ias09@ias.nic.in

arvindkumar.poswal@ias.nic.in

sinhac@ias.nic.in

Namit Mehta

Nikunja K Sundaray

Ponnambalam S

AB Gor

CADRE: Rajasthan

CADRE: Odisha

CADRE: WEST BENGAL

ab.gor@ias.nic.in.

namit.mehta@ias.nic.in

sundaray@ias.nic.in

ponnam.balam@ias.nic.in

CADRE: GUJARAT

V Shobana

Pankaj Kumar Bansal

Pankaj Yadav

Vijayendra

CADRE: TAMIL NADU

CADRE: HARYANA

CADRE: ASSAM-MEGHALAYA

v.shobana@ias.nic.in

bansalpk@ias.nic.in

ypankaj@ias.nic.in

vijayend@ias.nic.in

Hemant Rao

Anil Kumar

Avinash M Rajendran

B Udayalakshmi

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

CADRE: Uttar Pradesh

CADRE: KARNATAKA

CADRE: ANDHRA PRADESH

raoh@ias.nic.in

anilkumar.up@ias.nic.in

avinash.menonr@ias.nic.in

ulaxmi@ias.nic.in

Ajit Roy

Arvind Kumar Mina

ICP Keshari

Vikas Shankar Kharage

CADRE: UNION TERRITORY

CADRE: WEST BENGAL

CADRE: MADHYA PRADESH

CADRE: MAHARASHTRA

ajit.ut13@ias.nic.in

arvindkumarmina.ias2010@ias.nic.in

icp.keshari@ias.nic.in

kharagev@ias.nic.in

Sujeet Kumar

Pradyumna PS

Sandeep Verma

Saidingpuii Chhakchhuak

CADRE: GUJARAT

CADRE: ANDHRA PRADESH

CADRE: RAJASTHAN

CADRE: GUJARAT

sujeetkr.ias2010@ias.nic.in

pradyumnaps@ias.nic.in

vsandip@ias.nic.in

saidingpuii@ias.nic.in

Sumeet Kumar Jarangal

Arvind Kumar Verma

Ishita Roy

Rippudaman Singh Dhillon

CADRE: PUNJAB

CADRE: BIHAR

CADRE: KERALA

CADRE: HARYANA

skjarangal.ias09@ias.nic.in

ak.verma12@ias.nic.in

royi@ias.nic.in

rippudaman.dhillon@ias.nic.in

Mannan Akhtar

Pushpendra Kr Meena

Priyanka Mary Francis

Anil Mahadeo Kawade

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

CADRE: chhattisgarh

CADRE: KARNATAKA

CADRE: Maharashtra

mannanakhtar.ias11@ias.nic.in

pushpendrak.meena@ias.nic.in

pmfrancis.ias09@ias.nic.in

am.kawade@ias.nic.in

Devola Devi Das

Samir Kumar Biswas

Mohammad Tayyab

Lalit Jain

CADRE: ASSAM-MEGHALAYA

CADRE: MAHARASHTRA

CADRE: PUNJAB

CADRE: HIMACHAL PRADESH

devola.das@ias.nic.in

biswassk@ias.nic.in

m.tayyab@ias.nic.in

Lalitjain.ias11@ias.nic.in

20-02-1982

21-02-1974

21-02-1966

22-02-1985

22-02-1988

24-02-1985

24-02-1967

25-02-1964

25-02-1983

26-02-1984

26-02-1979

27-02-1986

27-02-1961

28-02-1977

28-02-1984

01-03-1962

01-03-1961

02-03-1980

02-03-1963

03-03-1970

03-03-1965

04-03-1978

04-03-1980

05-03-1983

05-03-1988

06-03-1962

07-03-1961

08-03-1977

09-03-1964

09-03-1986

10-03-1985

10-03-1977

11-03-1984

11-03-1962

12-03-1970

13-03-1966

13-03-1984

14-03-1978

14-03-1983

15-03-1963

15-03-1973

15-03-1963

16-03-1963

16-03-1964

17-03-1963

17-03-1961

17-03-1968

18-03-1981

18-03-1971

18-03-1964

19-03-1983

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

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IPS officers’ birthdays Feb 20, 2020 — Mar 19, 2020

Debasish Roy

Rajesh Tripathy

Abhash Kumar

Vivek Kishore

CADRE: WEST BENGAL

CADRE:Bihar

CADRE: TAMIL NADU

CADRE: AGMUT

droy@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

tripathy.r64@ips.gov.in

abhash@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

vivekkishore@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Balakrishna K T

Vijay Katariya

Shikha Goel

Rupin Sharma

CADRE: MADHYA PRADESH

CADRE: ANDHRA PRADESH

CADRE: NAGALAND

vijaykatariya@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

shikhagoel@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

rupinsharma@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Sanjiv Kumar Kalra

Meenu Kumari

Ram Kumar

CADRE: PUNJAB

CADRE: Bihar

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

sanjivkalra@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

mkumari@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

ramkumar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Lupheng Kailun

Ashutosh Singh

Rajesh Kumar

CADRE: Manipur

CADRE: CHhattisgarh

CADRE: ODISHA

lkailun@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

asingh@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

rajeshkumar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Ningshem Vashum

YB Khurania

Vineet Khanna

CADRE: Manipur

CADRE: ODISHA

CADRE: Madhya Pradesh

nvashum@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

ybkhurania@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

vkhanna@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Umesh Kumar

Ratan Kant Pandey

Anupam Agrawal

CADRE: KARNATAKA

CADRE: Uttar Pradesh

CADRE: Karnataka

ukumar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

rkpandey@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

aaggarawal@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Sunil Kumar

Kailash Chandra Bishnoi

Putta Vimaladitya

CADRE: TAMIL NADU

CADRE: Rajasthan

CADRE: Kerala

sunil_kumar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

kailashcb@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

putinv@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Simardeep Singh

Saiyed Mohd Afzal

Atul Singh

CADRE: Haryana

CADRE: MADHYA PRADESH

CADRE: Madhya Pradesh

ssingh@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

smafzal@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

as@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Brajesh Kumar Jha

Disha Mittal

Narasingha Bhol

CADRE: GUJARAT

CADRE: Tamil Nadu

CADRE: ODISHA

bkjha@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

disham@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

narasingha@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Jai Narayan Pankaj

Kulwant Kumar

B Dayananda

CADRE: Odisha

CADRE: Maharashtra

CADRE: KARNATAKA

jainp@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

kulwantk@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

bdayananda@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Aslam Khan

Mahesh Kumar Aggarwal

N Sanjay

CADRE: AGMUT

CADRE: Tamil Nadu

CADRE: ANDHRA PRADESH

aslamk@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

mkaggarwal@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

nsanjay@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Ganesh Kumar

Mohd Faiyaz Farooqui

CADRE: BIHAR

CADRE: PUNJAB

19-02-1966

26-02-1961

19-02-1963

27-02-1965

cadre: Karnataka

bkt@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

JR Mothaliya 20-02-1965

28-02-1966

CADRE: GUJARAT

sp-pan@gujarat.gov.in

Sangeeta Kalia 20-02-1980

01-03-1967

cadre: Haryana

skalia@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Raj Karan Nayyar 21-02-1987

01-03-1967

CADRE: West Bengal

rknayyar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Rekha Lohani 22-02-1973

01-03-1968

CADRE: ODISHA

rekhalohani@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Amit Lodha 22-02-1974

02-03-1961

CADRE: BIHAR

amitlodha@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Amit Chandra 23-02-1968

02-03-1981

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

amitchandra@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

AP Maheshwari 24-02-1961

03-03-1973

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

apmaheswari@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Adarsh Katiyar 24-02-1968

05-03-1976

CADRE: MADHYA PRADESH

adarshkatiyar@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Rajendra Pal Singh 25-02-1963

05-03-1975

CADRE: UTTAR PRADESH

rpalsingh@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Binay Kumar Mishra 26-02-1963

05-03-1977

CADRE: Assam-Meghalaya

bkmishra@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

ganesh.kr77@ips.gov.in

R Samuthirapandi

07-03-1965

07-03-1969

08-03-1981

09-03-1986

09-03-1966

10-03-1961

10-03-1979

11-03-1964

12-03-1980

13-03-1963

13-03-1972

14-03-1969

15-03-1967

15-03-1969

15-03-1971

17-03-1965

17-03-1982

17-03-1981

18-03-1968

18-03-1971

19-03-1967

14-03-1967

faiyaz@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

Mukesh Kumar Shrivastava

26-02-1961

06-03-1967

CADRE: TAMIL NADU

samuthirapandi@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

CADRE: Madhya Pradesh

mkshrivastava@mail.svpnpa.gov.in

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

birthdays Lok Sabha Members Feb 20, 2020 — Mar 19, 2020

Lok Sabha Members Feb 20, 2020 — Mar 19, 2020

Sirajuddin Ajmal

Biren Singh Engti

Rajesh Kumar Diwakar

Radheshyam Biswas

AIUDF (Assam)

INC (Assam)

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

AIUDF (Assam)

sirajuddin@sansad.nic.in

birens.engti@sansad.nic.in

rk.diwaker@sansad.nic.in

radheshyam.biswas@sansad.nic.in

Vishnu Deo Sai

Boora Narsaiah Goud

Feroze Varun Gandhi

CR Patil

BJP (Chhattisgarh)

TRS (Telangana)

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

BJP (Gujarat)

vishnudeo.sai@gov.in

bnarsaiah.goud@sansad.nic.in

ferozevarun.gandhi@sansad.nic.in

cr.patil@sansad.nic.in

Krishna Raj

Innocent

Vasanthi M

DV Sadananda Gowda

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

Ind. (Kerala)

AIADMK (Tamil Nadu)

BJP (Karnataka)

krishna.raj19@sansad.nic.in

innocent.mp@sansad.nic.in

vasanthi.m@sansad.nic.in

sadananda.gowda@sansad.nic.in

JC Divakar Reddy

Prakash Babanna Hukkeri

Vinayak Bhaurao Raut

Raosaheb Patil Danve

TDP (Andhra Pradesh)

INC (Karnataka)

SS (Maharashtra)

BJP (Maharashtra)

jcdr.tdp@gmail.com

mpchikkodi3290@gmail.com

vb.raut@sansad.nic.in

raosaheb.danve@sansad.nic.in

Udayanraje P Bhonsle

Dharambir Singh

Rajveer (Raju Bhaiya) Singh

Rajesh Pandey

NCP (Maharashtra)

BJP (Haryana)

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

udayanrajebhonsle@gmail.com

dharambir.mp@sansad.nic.in

rajveersingh.mp@sansad.nic.in

pandey.rajesh@sansad.nic.in

Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre

Kapil Moreshwar Patil

BJP (Maharashtra)

sanjaysdhotre@gmail.com

km.patil@sansad.nic.in

Konda Vishweshwar Reddy

Abhishek Singh

21-02-1958

21-02-1964

22-02-1967

23-02-1944

24-02-1966

26-02-1959

26-02-1960

02-03-1945

02-03-1959

04-03-1948

05-03-1947

05-03-1955

12-03-1971

13-03-1980

14-03-1962

15-03-1954

15-03-1959

16-03-1954

16-03-1955

18-03-1953

18-03-1955

19-03-1959

05-03-1961

05-03-1981

Rajya Sabha Members Feb 20, 20120 — Mar 19, 2020 Abhishek Manu Singhvi

Ram Nath Thakur

24-02-1959

03-03-1950

TRS (Telangana)

BJP (Chhattisgarh)

INC (West Bengal)

JD(U) (Bihar)

kvishweshwar.reddy@sansad.nic.in

abhishek.singh19@sansad.nic.in

a.singhvi@sansad.nic.in

ramnath.thakur@sansad.nic.in

Virendra Kumar

Vinod Chavda

N Gokulakrishnan

Ram Kumar Kashyap

27-02-1954

06-03-1979

25-02-1954

06-03-1951

BJP (Madhya Pradesh)

BJP (Gujarat)

AIADMK (Puducherry)

INLD (Haryana)

vkumar@sansad.nic.in

chavdav.lakhamashi@sansad.nic.in

ngk.pdy@sansad.nic.in

rk.kashyap@sansad.nic.in

Pon Radhakrishnan

KH Muniyappa

Anil Jain

Ghulam Nabi Azad

01-03-1952

07-03-1948

25-02-1960

07-03-1949

BJP (Tamil Nadu)

INC (Karnataka)

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

INC (Jammu & Kashmir)

ponrk@sansad.nic.in

khmuni@sansad.nic.in

dr.aniljain@sansad.nic.in

azadg@sansad.nic.in

Ramen Deka

RP Marutharajaa

K Bhabananda Singh

Lal Sinh Vadodia

01-03-1954

07-03-1963

01-03-1960

07-03-1956

BJP (Assam)

AIADMK (Tamil Nadu)

BJP (Manipur)

BJP (Gujarat)

ramen.deka@sansad.nic.in

r.p.marutharajaa@sansad.nic.in

k.bhabananda@sansad.nic.in

vadodia.ls@sansad.nic.in

Yashwant Singh

Sadhu Singh

Ram Vichar Netam

Ranvijay Singh Judev

01-03-1962

09-03-1941

01-03-1961

07-03-1969

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

AAP (Punjab)

BJP (Chhattisgarh)

yashwant.singh19@sansad.nic.in

singh.sadhu@sansad.nic.in

ramvichar.netam@sansad.nic.in

rs.judev@sansad.nic.in

Kirti Vardhan Singh

Shashi Tharoor

Mir Mohammad Fayaz

Derek O Brien

01-03-1966

09-03-1956

01-03-1977

13-03-1961

BJP (Uttar Pradesh)

INC (Kerala)

J&K PDP (Jammu & Kashmir)

AITC (West Bengal)

kirtivardhan.singh@sansad.nic.in

shashi.tharoor@nic.in

mir.fayaz@sansad.nic.in

derek.ob@sansad.nic.in

MC Mary Kom

Chandrapal Singh Yadav

Prabhubhai Nagarbhai Vasava MB Rajesh 01-03-1970

12-03-1971

BJP (Gujarat)

CPI(M) (Kerala)

Nominated

SP (Uttar Pradesh)

prabhu.vasava23@sansad.nic.in

mb.rajesh@sansad.nic.in

mary.kom@sansad.nic.in

chandrapal.yadav@sansad.nic.in

01-03-1983

19-03-1959

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

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Februaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;20

For the complete list, see www.gfilesindia.com

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

Tracking

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a group photograph with economists and experts at NITI Aayog, in New Delhi.

JUSTICE ANANT BIJAY SINGH He has been appointed judicial member of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).

SK JOSHI The 1984-batch IAS officer has been appointed Advisor to irrigation department.

ALOK SRIVASTAVA The 1984-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Member, National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).

ARUN GOEL The 1985-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre has been appointed Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry.

ANIL KUMAR KHACHI The 1986-batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre has been appointed Chief Secretary of Himachal Pradesh.

PRAVEEN KUMAR The 1987-batch IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre has been appointed Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

RAJESH BHUSHAN The 1987-batch IAS officer of the Bihar cadre has been appointed Secretary, Department of Rural Development.

SANJAY KUMAR SINGH The 1987-batch IAS officer of the Madhya

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

Pradesh cadre has been appointed Additional Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research & Education and Secretary, Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

RAJESH AGGARWAL The 1989-batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre has been appointed, Additional Secretary and Financial Adviser in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

RK KHANDELWAL The 1989-batch IAS officer of the Bihar cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

SUNAINA TOMAR

Nominee Director on the Board of Directors of NBCC (India).

CHANDRA SHEKHAR KUMAR The 1992-batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Higher Education.

NEELAM SHAMMI RAO The 1992-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Director General (Training), Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

VL KANTHA RAO

The 1989-batch IAS officer of the Gujarat cadre has been nominated Chairperson of Gujarat Industries Power Corporation Ltd.

The 1992-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Additional Secretary, Department of Defence Production.

SANJAY MALHOTRA

ASHOK KUMAR PARMAR

The 1990-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed Additional Secretary, Power (Distribution, Reforms and Restructuring), Ministry of Power.

The 1992-batch IAS officer of the J&K cadre has been appointed Advisor in the Inter-State Council Secretariat.

PRAMOD AGRAWAL

The 1993-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed Member (Administration) in the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).

The 1991-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Chairman-cum-Managing Director, Coal India Limited (CIL).

KAMRAN RIZVI The 1991-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre of has been appointed Govt

ALOK

NAGARAJU MADDIRALA The 1993-batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Ministry of Coal.

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Tracking TANMAY KUMAR The 1993-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Ministry of Power.

RAKESH KUMAR VERMA The 1993-batch IAS officer of the Punjab cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Tourism.

HARI RANJAN RAO The 1994-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Telecommunications.

BHARAT H KHERA The 1995-batch IAS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.

Petroleum Secretary and PCRA Chairman Dr MM Kutty presenting the awards at the inauguration of the Sanrakshan Kshamta Mahotsav â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2020, organised by the Petroleum Conservation Research Association, in New Delhi

RAJEEV SINGH THAKUR The 1995-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Military Affairs.

ASHISH KUMAR GOEL The 1995-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Rural Development.

SANTOSH KUMAR YADAV The 1995-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy.

SUBODH KUMAR SINGH The 1997-batch IAS officer of the Chhattisgarh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Food & Public Distribution.

SHANTANU The 1997-batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Military Affairs.

VISHAL GAGAN

cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Defence Production.

PUNEET AGARWAL The 1998-batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Defence Production.

ASHOK KUMAR SINGH The 1999-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre has been appointed Executive Director (Projects), National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG).

The 1998-batch IAS officer of the Odisha

Moving On: IAS officers retiring in February 2020 Assam

Jharkhand

Madhya Pradesh

Tamil Nadu

Shamsher Singh (2004) Sanjib K Gohain Boruah (2005) Biren Ch. Phukan (2006)

Rajeev Kumar (1984) Ranendra Kumar (2006) Sanjay Kumar Singh (2006) Danial Kandulna (2006)

Manohar Lal Dubey (2000) Rajendra Singh (2001)

Ashok Dongre (1987)

Nagaland

Rajeshwar Tiwari (1986)

Bihar

Telengana

Lithrongla G Chishi (2001) Kelei Zeliang (2004)

Union Territory

Punjab

Lalthangpuia Sailo (2002) Dr. Ajay Kumar Singla (2005)

Bipin Bihari Mallick (1986)

Dr. Roshan Sunkaria (1988) Bakhtawar Singh (2009)

West Bengal

Dr. Purnima Chauhan (2000)

Manipur

Rajasthan

Haryana

Ramnganing Muivah (1985) Gopen Meitei Th (2002)

Surendra Kumar Solanki (2004)

Jammu and Kashmir

Deepak Kumar (1984)

Rakesh Kumar Gupta (1986)

Chhattisgarh

Maharashtra

Ajay Singh (1983)

Himachal Pradesh

Trinanjan Chakraborty (2005)

Rajni Sekhri Sibal (1986)

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gfiles inside the government

vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

SUBODH YADAV The 1999-batch IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation.

ASHUTOSH AGNIHOTRI The 1999-batch IAS officer of the AssamMeghalaya cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs.

S SURESH KUMAR The 2000-batch IAS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Commerce.

T SREEKANTH The 2004-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT cadre has been appointed Private Secretary to G Kishan Reddy, Minister of State for Home Affairs.

ROOPA MISHRA The 2004-batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre has been appointed Director in the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation.

S SATYANARAYANA The 2006-batch IAS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre has been appointed Director, Census Operations and Director of Citizen Registration, Andhra Pradesh.

SRIDHAR The 2006-batch IAS officer has been posted as Director, Mid-Day Meal & School Sanitation.

BHAVANA WALIMBE The 2008-batch IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Director of Census Operations and Director of Citizen Registration for Madhya Pradesh.

MITHRAT T The 2009-batch IAS officer of the Kerala cadre has been appointed Director of Census Operation/Director of Citizen Registration, Kerala.

MILIND DHARNRAO RAMEKE The 2009-batch IAS officer of the Tripura cadre has been appointed Deputy Director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussorie.

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

New Appointments in the Defence Forces AIR COMMODORE TSS KRISHNAN has been appointed Deputy Director General of NCC Directorate (AP&Telangana), Secunderabad; AIR MARSHAL VIBHAS PANDE has assumed charge as Air Officer-in-Charge Maintenance (AOM); REAR ADMIRAL MD SURESH is new Chief of Staff of Southern Naval Command which is a training command of the Indian Navy; LT GENERAL GIRISH KUMAR is Surveyor General of India in the Survey of India; LT GEN SK SAINI the Southern Command Chief has been appointed new Vice Chief of the Army; VICE ADMIRAL KIRAN MANIKRAO DESHMUKH is Director-General Naval Projects (DGNP), Visakhapatnam; SANJAY VATSAYAN Commander of Eastern Naval Fleet, has been appointed Commander of Western Naval Fleet; AIR MARSHAL (RETD) ANJAN KUMAR GOGOI has been appointed Member of North Eastern Council; and LT GEN YK JOSHI has been appointed Northern Army Commander. RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS IN CHHATTISGARH ALOK SHUKLA, Principal Secretary, Planning, Finance and Statistics, has been posted as Principal Secretary, School Education and Chairman, Chhattisgarh Secondary Education Board; GAURAV DWIVEDI, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, has been given additional charge of Principal Secretary, Planning, Finance and Statistics; SUBODH KUMAR SINGH, Secretary, Labour Department, has been given additional charge as Secretary, PHED; DEVI DAYAL SINGH, Secretary, PHED, has been given additional charge as Secretary, Public Relations; RITA SHANDILYA, Secretary, GAD has been given additional charge as Commissioner, Rehabilitation and Commissioner, Land Records; GAJENDRA SINGH has been appointed PS to Sanjeev Kumar Balyan; T SREEKANTH has been appointed PS to G Kishan Reddy; SIDDHARTH KOMAL SINGH PARDESHI has been given additional charge as Director, Chhattisgarh State Road Development Corporation; A KULBHUSHAN TOPPO, Secretary, Social Welfare, has been posted as Member, Revenue Board, Bilaspur; SANGITHA P. Secretary, Housing and Environment, has been given additional charge as Secretary, Commercial Tax and Registration; AMBALGAN P., Secretary, Mineral Resources, has been handed over additional charge as Secretary, Culture Department; PRASANNA R., Secretary, Science and Technology, has been given additional charge as Secretary, Social Welfare Department; DHANANJAY DEWANGAN, Secretary, Co-operative Department, has been handed over additional charge as Registrar, Co-operative Department; MUKESH KUMAR, Special Secretary, Horticulture, has been posted as Commissioner and Director, Tribal Welfare and Scheduled Caste Development; S PRAKASH, Director, Public Instruction, has been given additional charge as Director, Panchayat; Sameer Vishnoi, Joint CEO, Chhattisgarh, has been given additional charge as Joint Secretary, Commerce and Information Technology; ANURAG PANDEY, Mission Director, Swachch Bharat Mission (Rural) Raipur, has been given additional charge as Secretary, Commerce and Industry; DHARMESH KUMAR SAHU, Director General, Registration and Stamp Duty, has been given additional charge of Mission Director, Swachch Bharat Mission (Rural), Raipur; RAMESH KUMAR SHARMA, Joint Secretary, Chief Secretaryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s office, has been given additional charge as Commissioner, Commercial Tax; JITENDRA KUMAR SHUKLA, Joint Secretary, Panchayat and Rural Development, has been given additional charge as Mission Director, State Literacy Mission; EFFAT AARA, Managing Director, Chhattisgarh Tourism, has been given additional charge as Managing Director, Chhattisgarh State Text Book Corporation; RANVEER SHARMA, Registrar, Firms and Societies, has been given additional charge as Deputy Secretary, Woman and Child Development Department; DIVYA UMESH MISHRA, Managing Director, Chhattisgarh State Text Book Corporation, has been given additional charge as Deputy Secretary, PHED; and D RAHUL VENKAT, Deputy Secretary, Planning, Finance and Statistics, has been given additional charge as Deputy Secretary, Tourism and Culture Department.

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The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi meeting with Council of Ministers, in New Delhi.

NIRAJ KUMAR

TARANJIT SINGH SANDHU

AP MAHESHWARI

The 2010-batch IAS officer has been appointed Additional Resident Commissioner and ex-officio Secretary, Resident Commission, J&K Government, New Delhi.

The 1988-batch Indian Foreign Service officer has been appointed India’s Ambassador to the United States

The 1984-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

VINAY MOHAN KWATRA The 1988-batch Indian Foreign Service officer has been appointed the next Ambassador of India to Nepal

S JAWEED AHMAD

ARUN KUMAR SAHU

RAJIV RAI BHATNAGAR

The 2010-batch IAS officer of the AGMUT cadre has been appointed Director of Census Operations/Director Citizen Registration at Deputy Secretary Level, Mizoram.

The 1996-batch Indian Foreign Service officer, currently High Commissioner of India to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, has been concurrently accredited as the next High Commissioner of India to the Commonwealth of Dominica, with residence in Port of Spain

The former 1984-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Advisor to the Lieutenant Governor of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

REMEJEUS EKKA

SANJEEV KUMAR SINGLA

The 2011-batch IAS officer has been appointed Secretary, Chhattisgarh State Election Commission.

The 1997-batch Indian Foreign Service officer appointed Private Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

AVNY LAVASA

ANJANI KUMAR SAHAY

The 2013-batch IAS officer has been appointed Commissioner, Jammu Municipal Corporation in Jammu & Kashmir.

The 2003-batch Indian Foreign Service officer has assumed charge India’s Ambassador to Republic of Mali.

AJAY BISARIA

The 2010-batch Indian Foreign Service officer has been appointed Acting Consul General of Consulate of India in Houston.

PRABHANSHU KUMAR SRIVASTAV The 2010-batch IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Private Secretary to the Chairman, National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC).

SAKSHI MITTAL

The 1987-batch Indian Foreign Service officer has been appointed India’s High Commissioner to Canada at Ottawa.

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SURENDRA ADHANA

The 1984-batch IPS officer has been posted as DG, Fire Services, UP.

HITESH CHANDRA AWASTHI The 1985-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Acting Director General of Police in Uttar Pradesh.

SANTOSH MEHRA The 1987-batch IPS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre has been appointed ADG, BPR&D.

SANJAY CHANDER The 1987-batch IPS officer of the West Bengal cadre has been appointed ADG, CRPF.

PANKAJ KUMAR SINGH The 1988-batch IPS officer of the Rajasthan cadre has been appointed as ADG, BSF.

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AMITABH RANJAN The 1988-batch IPS officer of the Tripura cadre has been appointed DGP, Tripura.

SL THAOSEN The 1988-batch IPS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed ADG, BSF.

PREM PRAKASH The 1993-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed ADG Prayagraj Zone, UP

SUJEET PANDEY The 1994-batch IPS officer has been appointed the first Police Commissioner of Lucknow.

MANOJ SHASHIDHAR The 1994-batch IPS officer of the Gujarat cadre has been inducted as Joint Director in the CBI.

ASSEM KUMAR ARUN The 1994-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed ADG, UP, Lucknow.

JAI NARAYAN SINGH The 1994-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed ADG, Kanpur Zone, UP.

NAVEEN ARORA The 1997-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre of has been appointed Joint Police Commissioner (Law & Order), Lucknow.

NEELABJA CHOUDHARY The 2000-batch IPS officer of the UP cadre has been appointed Joint Police Commissioner (Crime & PHQ), Lucknow.

LAV KUMAR The 2004-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed DIG, Gorakhpur Zone, UP.

SUDHIR KUMAR SINGH The 2009-batch IPS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre from SPS has been appointed Commandant of 15th Battalion, PAC, Agra.

KALANIDHI NAITHANI The 2010-batch IPS officer of the Uttar

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

Special Secretary and Financial Advisor, Ministry of Tourism, Rajesh Kumar Chaturvedi lighting the lamp at the inauguration of “Bharat Parv”, as part of the Republic Day 2020 celebrations, at Red Fort, in Delhi

Pradesh cadre has been appointed SSP, Ghaziabad.

VIKAS KUMAR SAHWAL The 2014-batch IPS officer performed the duties of Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to Governor of Madhya Pradesh from January 7 to January 21, 2020.

DEEPAK YADAV The 2015-batch IPS officer is on central deputation as Under Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat.

HARSH VARDHAN AGRAWAL The 2016-batch IPS officer has been appointed Aide-de-Camp (ADC) to Governor of Rajasthan.

AJAY SAXENA The 1984-batch IFS officer of the AGMUT cadre has been appointed Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of Forests) in Arunachal Pradesh.

G VISHWANATH REDDY The 1985-batch IFS officer has been appointed Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Head of Forests in Rajasthan.

SUNIL KUMAR AGGARWAL The 1986-batch IFS officer of the AGMUT cadre has been appointed PCCF in Arunachal Pradesh.

N PRATEEP KUMAR The 1986-batch IFS officer of the Andhra Pradesh cadre has been appointed Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of Forest Force), Andhra Pradesh.

DHANANJAI MOHAN The 1988-batch IFS officer of the Uttarakhand cadre has been appointed Director, Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

PAWNISH KUMAR The 1989-batch IFS officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre has been appointed Managing Director, Himachal Pradesh State Forest Development Corporation Limited, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh.

ANIL RAI The 1994-batch Indian Forest Service officer has been appointed Managing Director, Chhattisgarh Infrastructure Development Corporation (CIDC), Raipur.

N RAVINDRA The 1995-batch IFS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre has been appointed Regional Director, Forest Survey of India, Bengaluru.

SANJUKATA MUDGAL The 1998-batch IFS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre has been appointed Joint Secretary, Ministry of Culture.

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RUDRA GAURAV SHRESTH The 1999-batch IFS officer has been appointed OSD, Prime Ministerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Office.

PRADEEP SINGH The 2005-batch IFS officer of the Gujarat cadre has been appointed Director in the Department of Drinking Water.

MANISH DESAI The 1989-batch officer of the Indian Information Service has taken charge as Director General (West Zone) in Press Information Bureau (PIB), Mumbai.

TRISHALJIT SETHI The 1990-batch officer of the Indian Postal Service has been appointed Chief Vigilance Officer, NTPC.

VINEET MATHUR The 1994-batch officer of the Indian Postal Service has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs.

SUBODH KUMAR MATHUR The 1986-batch ICAS officer has been appointed Additional Controller General of Accounts in CGA office.

MANOJ SETHI The 1993-batch ICAS officer has been appointed Joint Secretary & FA, Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports.

ASHUTOSH SINGH The 2017-batch ICAS Probationer has been appointed Assistant Controller of Accounts in Central Board of Direct Taxes, New Delhi.

SUBHA NARESH BHAMBHANI The 1987-batch ITS officer has been appointed Chief Vigilance Officer, Engineers India Limited (EIL).

New appointments at Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) office The following officers have been appointed to assist CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat--VICE ADMIRAL R HARI KUMAR, VICE ADMIRAL AB SINGH, AIR MARSHAL RS SACHDEVA, AIR MARSHAL RK RANYAL, LT GEN TARANJIT SINGH and LT GEN AS BEDI. RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS IN WEST BENGAL JOYOSHI DAS GUPTA has been appointed Joint Secretary, Consumer Affairs; SYED SARWAR IMAM is Additional Secretary, MS & ME and T Department; NEELAM MEENA is Secretary, Correctional Administration Department; DUSHYANT NARIALA has been appointed Principal Secretary, Disaster Management and Civil Defence Department; RAJESH KUMAR SINHA is Secretary, Tribal Development Department; A SUBBIAH is Principal Secretary, Backward Classes Welfare Department; ABHINAV CHANDRA is Secretary, Agriculture Marketing Department; RAJANVIR SINGH KAPUR is MD, West Bengal Transport Corporation; APALA SETT is MemberSecretary, West Bengal Valuation Board; RACHNA BHAGAT is Director, ICDS; C Murugan is CEO,WBIIDC; AMIT CHOUDHURY is Additional Director, ATI; SMITA PANDEY is Additional Secretary, Fisheries Department; and NABA GOPAL HIRA has been appointed Secretary, Transport Department. RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS IN MAHARASTRA ARVIND KUMAR has been posted as Additional Chief Secretary (RDD and Water Conservation), Rural Development and Water Conservation Department, Mumbai; DT WAGHMARE has been appointed Chairman and Managing Director, MS Electric Transmission Company, Mumbai; PARRAG JAIIN NAINUTTIA is Secretary, Social Justice and Special Assistance Department, Mantralaya, Mumbai; RANJIT SINGH DEOL is Managing Director, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation, Mumbai; RR JADHAV is Secretary, Deputy Chief Minister Office, Mantralaya, Mumbai; PRAJKTA VERMA is Secretary, Marathi Bhasha; PURUSHOTTAM VERMA has been appointed Deputy Secretary, MoDoNER; SANTOSH MEHRA has been appointed as ADG, BPR &D; SN GAIKWAD is Municipal Commissioner, Pune Municipal Corporation; AM KAWADE is Commissioner, Cooperation and Registrar, Co-operative Societies, Pune; SAURABH RAO is Commissioner, Sugar, Pune; SS DUMBARE is Director General, MEDA, Pune; OMPRAKASH DESHMUKH is Inspector General Registration and Controller of Stamp, Pune; SR JONDHALE is Secretary (SDC) and SEO (2), GAD, Mantralaya, Mumbai; KB UMAP is Commissioner, State Excise, Mumbai; TUKARAM MUNDHE is Municipal Commissioner, Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Nagpur; AE RAYATE is Additional Settlement Commissioner and Additional Director, Land Records, Pune; SAMPADA MEHTA is Joint Commissioner, Sales Tax, Mumbai; RD NIVATKAR is Collector, Mumbai City, Mumbai; AYUSH PRASAD is Chief Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad, Pune; UA JADHAV is Chief Executive Officer, Zilla Parishad, Akola; and KIRAN PATIL has been posted as Deputy Secretary, Chief Secretary Office, GAD, Mantralaya, Mumbai.

RATAN AGRAWAL appointed Chairman of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).

appointed Controller in the Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC).

VINAYAN J

PRAVASH PRASHUN PANDEY

The 1992-batch IDES officer has been appointed Additional Secretary, Central Information Commission.

The 1994-batch IRTS officer has been appointed Executive Director (Admin), National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) at the Joint Secretary Level.

The 1992-batch IRPS officer has been appointed Joint Secretary, Department of Justice.

AJIT KUMAR

M SUBRAMANYAM

The 1984-batch IRS (C&CE) officer has been

The 1991-batch IRS-C&CE officer has been

The 1988-batch IDSE officer has been appointed Director in the Central Vigilance Commission.

MEENA BALIMANE SHARMA

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BALACHANDRA SUBRAMONEY IYER The 1994-batch IRPS officer has been appointed Deputy Director General in the Department of Telecommunications.

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vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

LALIT MOHAN PANDEY The 1995-batch IRSME officer has been appointed Chief Vigilance Officer, National Fertilizers Limited (NFL).

VIJAY SHARMA The 2001-batch IRAS officer has been appointed Member on the Board of Directors of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL).

MANOJ SAHAY The 1994-batch IA&AS officer has been appointed Director (A&F), NHIDCL at the Joint Secretary level.

VIMALENDRA ANAND PATWARDHAN The 1996-batch IA &AS Officer has been appointed Joint Secretary and Financial Advisor, Ministry of Civil Aviation

MANSOOR HASAN KHAN The 2002-batch IDAS officer has been appointed Director in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM).

RAJESH CHANDRA The 2003-batch IDAS officer has been appointed Director in the Central Vigilance Commission.

VACHASHPATI TRIPATHI The 2005-batch IRS-IT officer has been appointed Director in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

SIDLINGAPPA TELI The 2006-batch IRS (C&CE) officer will join Karnataka government for three years on deputation basis.

ABHISHEK CHANDRA GUPTA The 2007-batch IRS(C&CE) officer has joined the Air Port Cargo, Delhi Custom Zone.

T PRABHAKAR The 2009-batch IRS(C&CE) officer has been appointed OSD to Member (Admn & Vigilance) in CBIC.

DIVYA ALATHUR BHARATHAN The 2008-batch IP & TA & FS officer has been appointed Deputy Secretary in the Department of Expenditure.

RESHUFFLE OF IPS OFFICERS IN MADHYA PRADESH VARUN KAPOOR has been appointed ADG, RAPTC, Indore; SATISH KUMAR SAXENA has been appointed IG, SAF, Bhopal; VIVEK SHARMA is IG, Indore; SP SINGH has been appointed IG, PHQ; ANIL SHARMA is IG, Sagar; and BS CHAUHAN has been appointed IG, Jabalpur. RESHUFFLE OF IAS OFFICERS IN HARYANA A SREENIVAS has been appointed MD, Haryana Dairy Development Cooperative Federation; SEKHAR VIDYARTHI has been appointed Excise & Taxation Commissioner; SANJEEV VERMA is Special Secretary, Finance; ANITA YADAV is CEO, Khadi & Village Industries Board; RAMESH CHANDER BIDHAN is Deputy Commissioner, Sirsa; CHANDER SHEKHAR KHARE has been appointed Director, Food & Civil Supplies; Ashok Kumar Garg has been appointed Director, Consolidation of Land Holdings & Land Records; GARIMA MITTAL is Additional CEO, Faridabad Metropolitan Development Authority; PRABHJOT SINGH has been posted as Special Secretary, Health; SN ROY has been appointed to Urban Local Body; PANKAJ AGRAWAL has been posted as Commissioner, Labour Department; VIJAY SINGH DAHIYA has been appointed Director, Agriculture; AJIT BALAJI JOSHI has been appointed Director, Higher and Technical Education; WAZEER SINGH is Director, Archives; DHEERA KHANDELWAL is ACS, Women and Child Development; ANURAG RASTOGI is Principal Secretary, Transport; V UMASHANKAR is Additional PC to Chief Minister, Haryana; VIJAYENDRA KUMAR is Principal Secretary, Skill Development; RAKESH GUPTA is Project Director, CM's Good Governance Associates Programme; NITIN KUMAR YADAV is DG, Supplies & Disposals; ANURAG AGARWAL is Managing Director, Haryana State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation; A SREENIVAS is Managing Director, Haryana Dairy Development Cooperative Federation; SEKHAR VIDYARTHI has been appointed Excise & Taxation Commissioner; and HARDEEP SINGH has been appointed Director, Environment. IFS officers allocated cadre in Rajasthan GYAN CHAND MAKWANA, UPKAR BORANA, GANESH KUMAR VERMA, HARI KISHAN SARASWAT, DEVENDRA PRATAP JAGAWAT, SANJAY PRAKASH BHADU, RAMESH KUMAR MALPANI, RAJENDRA KUMAR HUDDA, MAHENDRA KUMAR SHARMA, SUDARSHAN SHARMA and MUKESH SAINI. Addtionally, ADITYA PURI has been appointed Advisor for selecting the new HDFC Bank CEO. FOREST SERVICE OFFICERS ALLOTTED UTTARAKHAND CADRE KHUSHAL SINGH RAWAT, DEEP CHAND PANT, PRAKASH SHARMA, NANDA BALLABH, MUKESH KUMAR, UMESH CHAND JOSHI, BALWANT SINGH SHAHIL, INDRA SINGH NEGI, DINKAR TIWARI, BALDEV SINGH and NEERAJ KUMAR.

DHARMENDRA KUMAR The 2008-batch IOFS officer has been appointed Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

MADHU RANJAN KUMAR The 2015-batch IRS(C&CE) officer, will join the Department of Commerce as Deputy Commissioner, FALTA SEZ, on deputation basis for three years.

BHAGWANDAS GAJGHATE The 2008-batch IOFS officer has been

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

appointed Deputy Secretary in the Department of Defence Production.

PURUSHOTTAM VERMA The 2009-batch ISS officer has been appointed Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region.

DILASHA ANAND The 2015-batch IES officer has been appointed Research Officer in the Economic Wing of Embassy of India, Washington DC in USA.

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...by the way Local body politics

T Yogi lords over bureaucracy

ttar Pradesh has never seen such adhocism in the civil services. It was August 31, 2019 when the previous Chief Secretary Anup Chandra Pandey retired from the service. Instead of appointing a full-fledged chief secretary, the Yogi Adityanath government handed over charge to the seniormost IAS officer RK Tiwari. Tiwari, a 1985-batch IAS officer with an impeccable career record continued to be the acting chief secretary till recently. Finally, he was appointed as Chief Secretary on February 15, 2020 but the damage had been done. The way the most important administrative office has been functioning in India’s most populous state has not only perplexed the 600-strong IAS cadre in the state but has brought the bureaucracy to a standstill. In the past, a full time CS used to be appointed within a week or the very same day. The Chief Secretary is the administrative head of the government and acts as the principal advisor to the CM on all matters of governance. He also serves as a link between the CM and other secretaries of the state government. Most importantly, it is the CM who has the authority to select the CS. What was bizarre was that leave applications were handled by the Chief Minister’s office. Tiwari continues to the Agriculture Production Commissioner (APC), considered as the No. 2 post in the administration since the state is primarily an agriculture-based economy. Tiwari wasn’t given the APC post for more than three months after superannuation of Prabhat Kumar of the same 1985-batch early last year. The then Chief Secretary Anup Pandey was given additional charge of APC. There are many more examples of the mishandling of topranking civil servants. It is no wonder that the motivation and morale of officers is at an all-time low. Watch this space to learn more. g

www.indianbuzz.com

he Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) has got its eighth civic chief, in a span of around eight years, this time in the form of Chandrakant K Dange a 2010-batch IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre who took charge from outgoing commissioner Balaji Khatgaonkar. Dange holds an M.Tech degree from IIT Kharagpur. He has rich experience of serving in various government departments like tribal development and municipalities, including Jalgaon. He was currently serving as secretary in the state’s general administration department (GAD) and is known for his no-nonsense attitude and very firm approach in administrative circles. However, in the current scenario, it is to be seen if Dange manages to have an upper hand or succumbs to the intense political pressure that is being exerted by the two warring factions in the BJP-ruled municipality and an aggressive Shiv Sena which is seated in the opposition. This becomes all the more relevant as Dange’s appointment as MBMC commissioner is part of a major reshuffle announced by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). g

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gfiles inside the government vol. 13, 11 | February 2020

...by the way

Running with lateral entry!

Importance of sons-in-law

f you are a top ranking civil servant and happen to be the son-in-law of a Supreme Court judge, then imagine the guest list of those who attend even a mundan (hair shaving) ceremony. Yes, even the Prime Minister and Home Minister were there. Lutyens Delhi’s power circle was abuzz after a tweet from a lawyer about the high-profile mundan. Those in attendance were President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and a number of chief ministers, among others. “Apparently this blue-eyed Joint Secretary is the son in law of a senior SC judge and the mundan ceremony of his daughter was at the residence of that Judge!” the prominent lawyer tweeted. The civil servant in question is Diwakar Nath Mishra, a 2000-batch IAS officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre and Joint Secretary in the Commerce Ministry. He had worked in the petroleum ministry before his current assignment and was the Secretary, Oil Industry Development Board. He is the son-in-law of Supreme Court Judge, Justice Arun Kumar Mishra. g

gfiles inside the government vol. 13, issue 11 | February 2020

f one observes the trends of recruitment by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), it appears the government intends to focus more on the lateral entry system. The declining numbers were revealed when Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, in a reply to Rajya Sabha, stated that the number has declined in the last four years. Though he gave the numbers of all the recruitment exams conducted by UPSC, a similar trend is seen in the Civil Services exams conducted to select candidates for the top administrative posts like the IAS and IPS. The Minister stated that the number of personnel recruited by the UPSC has declined in the last four years and reached its lowest of 2,352 in 2018-19. According to statistics, a total of 3,750 candidates were recommended by the UPSC in 2015-16; 3,020 in 2016-17; 3,083 in 2017-18 and 2,352 in 2018-19. For the Civil Services too, the numbers have come down since 2015 when 1,164 vacancies were announced. Similarly, in the year 2016 the numbers further declined to 1,029 and to 980 in 2017. It further reduced to 782 in the year 2018. However, it saw a minor rise at 896 in 2019. The trend is likely to continue as the motto of the government is ‘less government and more governance’. The thrust for lateral entry and de-linking of the Railway Services from the Civil Services examination, all indicate that the number of vacancies for Civil Services Examination would see an uptrend – the corollary being less recruitment. g

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