Miffed over ‘massacre’, Khanday quits as Chief Secretary

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

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SRINAGAR, Aug 25: Developing serious differences with Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led Cabinet, Chief Secretary Iqbal Khanday has sought voluntary retirement from Indian Administrative Service (IAS) with effect from August 31, 2015---three months short of his date of superannuation.

“Yes, yesterday (Monday) at 11.00 a.m. I have applied for voluntary retirement from service with effect from August 31. My papers are pending with Chief Minister who is currently on tour in New Delhi”, Mr Khanday, a 1978-batch IAS officer, told STATE TIMES while confirming his resignation. He said that he would continue to attend his office till August 31.

Earlier, speaking to this correspondent over telephone Principal Secretary to Chief Minister Bharat Bhushan Vyas denied to have seen or received any such communication from the Chief Secretary. “I also heard it from different sources. I didn’t feel it appropriate to ask Khanday Sahab if he had resigned”, Vyas said.

Even as Khanday declined to reveal what exactly led to his act of applying for voluntary retirement three months ahead of his scheduled date of retirement, highly placed bureaucratic sources revealed to this correspondent that the Chief Secretary was “terribly miffed” over the last Friday’s administrative reshuffle. “He called it a massacre, asked how could the Heads of Departments, Deputy Commissioners, Secretaries to Government and Commissioner-Secretaries be shifted after every three and four months to new places of posting in gross violation of the transfer policy in vogue”, said a senior bureaucrat believed to be close to Mr Khanday.

Another highly placed IAS officer disclosed that on Thursday last, Mr Khanday had requested Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to defer the scheduled Cabinet meeting of Friday (August 21) by one week.

“It was communicated to him that the administrative reshuffle, which was the key agenda item, could not be delayed as the Cabinet was meeting with a long pause of three months. He was told that the meeting could be held in his absence. Immediately thereafter, Principal Secretary Planning & Development Mr B.R. Sharma was appointed as Cabinet Secretary for a day and it was decided to proceed with the schedule in Mr Khanday’s absence”, the senior bureaucrat said.

“On Friday, Mr Khanday stayed away on leave as his brother’s 10-day-old grandson had died. However, the government took a serious note of the fact that nobody on that day was present in Chief Secretary’s office. With the seniority, civil list and some other key records not available immediately and the General Administration Department being handicapped in absence of Chief Secretary on the day of a crucial meeting, Government in a way communicated its displeasure to Mr Khanday. Minutes after his arrival in office on Monday, Khanday tendered his resignation”.

A different well-placed bureaucratic source said that Khanday’s relationship with some ministers---both of PDP and BJP---had begun to turn sour in May when a number of his proposals were drastically changed. On one point of time, there was almost an altercation between Chief Secretary and a Cabinet Minister from South Kashmir, both asserting with their authority over certain transfers and appointments. Chief Secretary had taken “a serious note” of the humiliation a Deputy Commissioner in South Kashmir had been publicly subjected to by a Minister’s “constituency incharge” in the matter of providing accommodation to him at the district headquarters.

“The IAS lobby had complained to CS that a young boy representing a Minister had publicly threatened a DC and given him deadline of two days to give him possession of a government quarter vacated by the transfer of a Deputy SP.  Finally, a former MLC of Congress party was thrown out and the Minister’s aide accommodated. Mr Khanday was visibly upset over such developments”.

Sources said that things came to a head when Mr Khanday failed to give a prize posting to the attached KAS officer Talat Parvez Rohella. At least two Cabinet Ministers had taken exception to it that on the one hand Government had removed Rohella as Director of Tourism and ordered an inquiry into his conduct of having created unauthorised liabilities to the tune of Rs 25 crore and on the other hand same tainted official was being recommended for a key posting. In fact, some of the Ministers had even demanded registration of FIR by Vigilance Organisation against Mr Rohella, while dismissing the one-man inquiry, being conducted by Commissioner-Secretary Agriculture Production Ashraf Bukhari, as “eyewash”, aimed at giving a clean chit to the KAS officer.

The Ministers had raised a question that if the Government had declared former CEO of Sonmarg Development Authority Mohammad Yousuf “deadwood” and terminated his service for issuing building permissions to hundreds of illegal hotels, why the Director of Tourism, who functioned as Chairman of BOCA in all Tourist Development Authorities, should be spared and given a prize posting.

Same Ministers had also objected to Chief Secretary’s direction to Advocate General to get the date of a hearing of a court case preponed so that his favourites could be inducted into IAS before Mr Khanday’s own retirement on November 30, 2015.

According to the sources, Mr Khanday had gone out of way to precipitate the induction into IAS of his favourites who included KAS officers Dr Abdul Rashid (former IAS officer Jaleel Khan’s son-in-law), Mohammad Saleem Shishgar (brother of Commissioner-Secreatry GAD Gazanfar Hussain), Sheikh Fayyaz Ahmad (son of former Chief Secretary Sheikh Ghulam Rasool), KAS inductees of Technical Quota 2000, besides Talat Parvez Rohella, Anil Kumar Gupta, Rukhsana Gani (Mr Khanday’s own sister and wife of Divisional Commissioner Kashmir Dr Asgar Samoon), Rehana Batool, Zubair Ahmad (Special Secretary to Chief Secretary), Reva Kumari, Peerzada Hafizullah Shah and Mir Tariq Ali.

Sources said that Mr Khanday was unhappy when some Ministers asked him to break the old practice of bringing the administrative reshuffle as a non-agenda item during the Cabinet meeting. “They made it clear that they would attend only if the complete proposal list was provided to all Cabinet Ministers in advance. So it was first time that such a list was provided to all the Ministers ahead of the meeting”, one of the Cabinet Ministers disclosed to STATE TIMES.

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