Just Transferred: The Untold Story Of Ashok Khemka

189 Pages·2020·3.512 MB·English

by  Namita Kala Bhavdeep Kang

To our parents
who made us the women we are
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
1. The Outsider
2. Getting into the IAS
3. Baptism by Fire
4. Ashok Weds Jyoti
5. Ghanai Ziddi Hai: The Bansi Lal Years
6. Go Take a Walk: The Chautala Years
7. Nobody’s Man
8. Crusader against Corruption
9. Citizen Khemka
10. The Vadra Bombshell
11. The Empire Strikes Back
12. Seeds of a Scam, Harvest of Vengeance
13. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
14. Curtains for Hooda
15. The Khattar Years: The More Things Change …
16. The Years Go By
Epilogue
Authors’ Note
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Plate Section
Footnotes
About the Book
Copyright
Authors’ Note
R
EBELLION AGAINST THE STATE is an act of the mind. It takes a
certain kind of individual to take up cudgels against the oppressor on behalf
of the oppressed, especially during times when there are no noisy murmurs
of discontent or when the common citizenry is unaware that its rights are
being trampled upon in quotidian matters. Ashok Khemka symbolizes the
lens that scrutinizes all that is rotten in the Indian body politic; he is also the
arm that valiantly tries to change it, in any way he can, whether big or small.
His story is an uncomfortable mirror that faithfully reflects the bleak
truth of all governments: they come, they go; nothing changes. The
underlying tenor of his career as a public servant is the unchanging and
unchangeable system of governance. Common themes that keeps recurring
with every change of government include the uniformity of action displayed
by all political parties either in or out of power, notably the methods of
rewards and retributions that stay constant, from regime to regime, as do the
devices to deal with rebellious officers.
Khemka’s journey runs in two parallel lines, illustrating his struggles
both as a man and a civil servant caught up in the cross currents of the
political forces at play. On the one hand, he is tied to his conscience and his
compulsive need to serve the public, and on the other, he is bound by an
equally pressing necessity to protect his family in times of crises of which
there have been many during the course of his career.
Did he never fear the might of the state? Khemka, invariably honest,
replies: ‘Every time. Whoever says that they are not scared would be lying.
Every time I take a decision that goes against the government, I feel scared.
But the truth is that if I don’t take that decision, I cannot sleep at night.’
The impact of his actions in 2012 have gone far beyond the Vadra case
and certainly much further than anything that Khemka himself ever
imagined. Consider this. Land scams proliferate during the Hooda regime.
Farmers are dispossessed and cheated, as we now know from the CBI
inquiry and the Supreme Court order in the Manesar case. Yet, Sonia
Gandhi, as Congress President at the time, lauds the Haryana model of land
acquisition.
Khemka blows the whistle and the very next year, in 2013, the UPA
government responds with a land acquisition law aimed at correcting the
historical injustice against dispossessed farmers. Had there been such a law
earlier, the landscape of Haryana in general, and Gurgaon in particular,
would have been very different indeed.
What most people tend to forget is that Vadra was just the tip of the
iceberg. Landgrab was rampant for around a decade or more and there were
several other big fish involved in the game. Khemka was the first to red-flag
the Panchayat Land Scam and the Land Acquisition-cum-Release scam and
to point out that land use was being changed to facilitate the interests of real
estate players at the expense of farmers.
Khemka’s actions may not have had a definitive bearing on the UPA
government’s stringent land acquisition law, which was actively supported
by the BJP at the time. There was already an impulse within the UPA to
make land acquisition laws more farmer-friendly and to this end, a
parliamentary committee had already been set up to examine the issue. It
was headed by Sumitra Mahajan, the Speaker of the next Lok Sabha, who
was then a member of parliament from the Opposition. But Khemka may
well have been the catalyst who speeded things up.
The Raxil case was another public interest issue which Khemka took
up; it affected the most depressed sections of society and exposed the ugly
face of government collusion with a foreign pharma company.
Ashok Khemka may have taken the road less travelled by most
bureaucrats, but he is by no means the only one. There have been other civil
servants who have trodden those same paths and suffered the same fate. For
instance, U. Sagayam who discovered a mining scam involving the local
mafia and politicians in 2012 was promptly transferred out of Madurai.
Sagayam, another ‘Khemka-type officer’ suffered twenty transfers in
twenty-three years.
The Telegraph reports that a survey conducted among officers of the
central civil services in 2010 revealed that 34 per cent of the respondents had
considered resigning from the civil services at some point. It stated that
honest civil servants were apprehensive of being posted to obscure areas
‘with zero job content or worse a string of such postings as a price for
honesty’. Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were cited as the
states which had the worst records when it came to transfers.
A point of contention amongst honest babus is that there are always
pliable bureaucrats waiting in the wings ready to take over when they are
shunted out. A retired IAS officer, Arun Bhatia, who had the dubious
distinction of being transferred twenty-four times in twenty-four years,
summed up the situation when he told the Telegraph that ‘transfers
effectively achieve the purpose of covering up corruption’. He believed that
transfers that were effected before a tenure of two to three years were
‘usually vindictive, arbitrary and corrupt’. 111
In 2013, the Supreme Court, while ruling on a public interest litigation,
had noted that ‘civil servants did not have stability of tenure, particularly in
the State Governments where transfers and postings are made frequently, at
the whims and fancies of the executive head for political and other
considerations and not in public interest.’ 112
Ordering sweeping reforms to insulate the bureaucracy from frequent
transfers, the court ruled that ‘the civil servants shall not act on verbal
orders, cannot be transferred frequently, and are entitled to a fixed tenure.’ It
directed the Centre, state governments and union territories to constitute
within three months a civil services board comprising high-ranking serving
officers with the cabinet secretary at the Centre, and the chief secretary at the
state level to guide and advise on all service matters, especially transfers,
posting and disciplinary action.
The court observed that much of the deterioration in the standards of
probity and accountability of civil servants was due to political influence and
held that ‘civil servants cannot function on the basis of verbal or oral
instructions, orders, suggestions, proposals, etc. and they must also be
protected against wrongful and arbitrary pressure exerted by the
administrative superiors, political executive, business and other vested
interests’.
It also recommended that a transfer could take place before two years
only if the civil services board (CSB) in the state recommended it or the
government had strong reasons for it. The PIL had been moved in the
Supreme Court by eighty-three retired bureaucrats. The former Union
cabinet secretary, the late T.S.R. Subramaniam, who died in early 2018, was
one of the petitioners.
The Supreme Court directive resulted in a notification by the Personnel
& Training department on 30 January 2014 stating that cadre officers of the
All India Services (AIS) will now generally hold their posts for at least two
years, unless promoted, retired or sent on deputation outside the state or on
training beyond two months. 113
Despite the notification, there has not been any appreciable difference
in the existential crisis that grips the bureaucracy. The Telegraph further
reported that ‘while some states have set up CSBs, not all the bodies are seen
to be fair. A central government official says the boards consist of people
who are about to retire, or the “yes men” of politicians. They are not at all
independent.’
This is borne out by the fact that the Khattar regime broke the two-year-
tenure rule and transferred Khemka from the Transport department within a
matter of months. Sanjiv Chaturvedi from the Indian Forest Service, another
Haryana cadre officer applied for a change of cadre to Uttarakhand after
facing twelve transfers in five years. He came to deputation in Delhi as
Central Vigilance officer, where he ran afoul of the Modi regime.
In 2015 Chaturvedi told Livemint.com :
I firmly believe in zero tolerance against corruption and I
took a lot of heart from the PM’s slogan, na khaunga, na
khane doonga (Neither will I be corrupt, nor let anyone else
be corrupt), but I have been very disappointed. After my
removal from the post of CVO (chief vigilance officer), I
submitted document upon document; I requested for an
impartial probe; instead I got harassment … My promotion
was stopped, my annual confidential report spoilt, and then
my own ministry issued a defamatory press release against
me. 114
But can the onus of fighting corruption be placed solely on the bureaucracy?
Can the bureaucracy alone be held responsible for the malaise? Isn’t the
political class equally culpable with its perpetual need for electoral
financing?
Electoral financing is regarded by many political observers as the
fountainhead of all corruption and the main source of the never-ending
conflict between private and public interests. Huge investments in electoral
contests do not serve the public interest. He who pays the piper calls the tune
and in this case, the moneybags who finance political parties during
elections call the shots after they are over. A bureaucrat is never allowed to
play spoilsport.
As the late T.S.R Subramaniam observed, ‘moral degradation flourishes
at every level’ of governance and the bureaucracy largely remains the
willing tool of its political masters. As long politicians are prey to electoral
financing and, vested interests, the demand for a weak-kneed and corrupt
bureaucracy will continue. The ‘system’ will endure and while it does, there
will be no room for honest babus and ‘Khemka-type’ officers will continue
to be Outsiders.
Bhavdeep Kang and Namita Kala
Prologue
I
T WAS AN ORDINARY October day in New Delhi, not quite warm and
not quite cold. Busy pedestrians went about their business, traffic hummed
as usual and pigeons billed and cooed on the crowded streets. There was
absolutely nothing to indicate that a momentous event was about to take
place. Although there were the odd clues. Strong undercurrents of public
anger brewed beneath the surface. The atmosphere in the national capital and
across large tracts of the countryside was politically charged and the mood
was distinctly anti-corruption.
Barely a stone’s throw away from the Indian parliament, right at the
heart of Lutyens’ Delhi, a press conference was underway at Vithalbhai Patel
House. It was 5 October 2012. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government was midway into its second term and a series of scams had
already left its image more than a little bedraggled. Arvind Kejriwal, then an
anti-corruption activist, was about to drive home the last nail into the
government’s coffin. He began to speak.
Kejriwal normally made great copy, so the room was jam-packed with
scribes on the hunt for a story. He was dressed in a light-blue shirt, with the
usual white cap adorning his head. It was part of the ensemble that members
of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement wore with a jaunty air, to
declare their identity and announce their opposition to the corruption that
was rife under UPA II. He opened his attack with a bald announcement: ‘We
will talk about Sonia Gandhi’s son-in law Robert Vadhera.’ (He pronounced
Vadra as Va-deh-ra.)
Kejriwal went on to expose Vadra’s land dealings. He claimed that
Vadra had acquired property worth ₹300 crore through an investment of just
₹50 lakh, over a space of three years. 1 Kejriwal would later launch his own
party (the Aam Aadmi Party) and go on to become Chief Minister of Delhi.
Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan was seated beside Kejriwal. His
father, former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, was also on the dais,
lending gravitas to the proceedings. They were both minus the white caps.
Kejriwal announced that DLF (Delhi Land and Finance) had given Vadra an
unsecured, interest-free loan of ₹65 crore. A loan he had then used to
purchase property from DLF itself. ‘Why? What did they gain? Sochnay
waali baat hai (It’s something to think about),’ he added.
The younger Bhushan cited papers available on the website of the
Registrar of Companies, which revealed that Vadra had purchased properties
from DLF over a period of three years through five companies using the