AAP government wants flats of shifted bureaucrats vacated

The AAP government has reportedly urged the Centre to get vacated all houses which are still being occupied by IAS and Danics officers who are no longer working with the city administration. The government is said to have sent a list of 35 IAS and Dancis officers, posted either with the Centre, other states and Union Territories.

Among the officers whose names have reportedly been sent to the Centre are 1984 batch bureaucrats — Shakuntala D. Gamlin, posted as the chief secretary of Arunachal Pradesh, Arvind Ray, transferred to Mizoram, and Goa chief secretary S.R.K. Srivastava, 1985-batch officer Parimal Rai, appointed as the advisor to the Chandigarh Administration, 1990 cadre’s Jitendra Narain and 1994 batch officer Ashish Chandra Verma, both posted to Arunachal Pradesh, 1996 cadre’s Gitanjali Gupta Kundra, who is in Mizoram, 2000 batch officer K.K. Jindal, who is in Chandigarh, 2003 cadre bureaucrat Biaktulunga, posted to Mizoram, 2007 batch officer Govind Jaiswal, who is in Goa, 2012 batch officers Satyendra Singh Dursawat (Pudducherry), Sonal Sawarup and Himanshu Gupta (both in Arunachal Pradesh) and Harleen Kaur (Mizoram.)

Several bureaucrats said that the rules clearly state that families of bureaucrats carrying out hard postings in places like Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Puducherry have to be provided alternate accommodation in Delhi. But the one’s who have taken up soft postings in places like Chandigarh and Goa are not covered under any such rules.

The AAP government’s decision to get its houses vacated was reportedly taken at a recent Cabinet meeting. A highly-placed source said that the AAP government also decided to approach the Centre to provide it with equivalent number of same category of government houses in lieu of its houses occupied by IAS and Danics officers posted with the Union government or any other state or Union Territory by June 30,2016, failing which the same rules shall apply to the bureaucrats posted out of Delhi as they apply to ministers of Delhi when they demit office.

A senior officer, who has recently been transferred, said that the decision reflects that the Delhi government was still angry with IAS and Danics officers as many of them have been at loggerheads with it over a host of contentious issues. “This is another method that the government has adopted to harass officers who have earlier refused to toe their line of politics,” he added.