Ramanisblog

Tag: Indian Administrative Service

  • Devyani Indian Diplomat Row Real Story

    The recent tiff between the US and The Indian Government over the arrest of  Devyani Kobargade, Vice Consul of India in US by handcuffinng her and the retaliation of India by withdrawing security cover of US diplomats in India and its refusal to renew the IDs of US diplomats makes an interesting read.

    Scroll down for Video.

    Utham Kobargade, Father devyani
    Utham Kobargade

    The latest is that India has posted the ex vice-consul as the representative of UN in US.

    The US on its part, short of tendering an apology has tones down its rhetoric but insisted that Law will take its course.

    There is also an accusation by India that she was being framed and a Travel Agency is likely to be prosecuted for claiming tax exemption for the Visa application of the Maid.

    In this confusion I was lost in understanding this issue.

    What are the charges and how did the Vice consul violate it?

    To understand this one has to know how maids are appointed in the US  .

    The cost of a maid staying at home to do the house hold cores is very high in the US.

    They have to be paid between $5,000-10,000 per month with a total working hours of 40 hours a week.

    One can not afford this with a Vice Consul’s Pay.

    So the diplomatic community devise ingenious methods.

    They enter into a work contract with a maid from India at the stipulated rate of $ 9.50 per hour ,complying with 40 hours work a week and other norms required by the US law

    This contract is to keep the US authorities at bay.

    The people who seek a maid at Home enter into another agreement with the same worker from India for a salary of Rs 20 or 30 000 a month and the money will be paid in India.

    The domestic work is mad to work for a longer duration during the day up to 20 hours!

    The workers can not retaliate by going to the authorities as the Passport is being held by the Employer.

    In the present case, the maid, unable to bear the work load and treatment came out of the house and complained to the authorities.

    They have taken action  by arresting the Diplomat.

    Being a diplomat with immunity she was not arrested in Indian Premises(that is diplomatic area), but on the road as she was about to enter her car after dropping her child at the School.

    What irked India is the fact that she was handcuffed.

    India retaliated as mentioned in the opening portions of this post.

    There seems to be no denial of the illegal act of the Diplomat but a sense of outrage at Indian Diplomat having been handcuffed and hysteria at being insulted by the US.

    Indian Fishermen are being shot by Sri Lanka, indians in Singapore(Tamils) are being deported for violence with no proof.

    Indian fishermen’s nets and cache are being destroyed by the Lanka Navy in Indian Waters.

    indian government does not seem fit to retaliate in this instance.

    But in the Devyani’s case the act of India is disproportionate.

    Why?

    Devyani Khobragade is the daughter of a retired IAS officer who is a Congress heavy weight and was involved in the Adarsh Scam,Maharashtra where flats meant for War widows were grabbed by the bureaucrats and politicians.

    The Adarsh reports names of Home Minister, Speaker of Lok Sabha and others as the accused and the report was not accepted by the Maharashtra Government

    He draws a lot of water in the Congress.

    In a fresh blow to diplomat Devyani Khobragade, currently in the thick of controversy over her arrest in a alleged visa fraud in the US, was pulled up by the Adash judicial panel “for making a false statement” to become a member of the society.

    Khobragade was allotted flat number 2301 spread over 1,076 square feet in Adarsh society. The judicial commission report stated her membership was approved though she was ineligible for the flat in Adarsh.

    http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-21/india/45443474_1_adarsh-society-adarsh-flat-devyani-khobragade

     

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  • Robert Vadra DLF Deal- Official Transferred 43 Times!

    Senior IAS Officer, Ashok Khemka was transferred for blocking the land deal between DLF and Robert Vadra.

     

    “The Haryana government was on the backfoot Tuesday after a senior IAS officer accused the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government of transferring him for probing alleged irregularities in the land deals of Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

     

    Ashok Khemka, a 1991-batch officer, said he was moved out of his job as Inspector General of Registration and Director General (Consolidation) last week for wanting to examine all land deals of Vadra in Haryana.

     

    The officer, despite being transferred, ordered an inquiry to look into the “alleged undervaluation of some properties registered by Robert Vadra or his companies as vendor or vendee”. Before being relieved, he also ordered the cancellation of the sale of a 3.5 acre plot of land in Manesar-Shikohpur that Vadra had sold to DLF for Rs 58 crore.

     

    The Hooda government denied Khemka’s allegations and sought to justify his transfer. It also ordered an inquiry into the allegations by a panel of three senior officers headed by the additional chief secretary. “The preliminary facts brought to the notice of the government by the district revenue authority at Gurgaon point out that prima-facie the factual position is different from the stand taken by Khemka,” the government said in a statement.

    '_Ashok_Khemka.'jpg
    Ashok Khemka, transferred for enquiring into Robert Vadra DLF .

     

    But Khemka accused the government of victimising him. “My fault is that am upright and exposed scams,” he told The Indian Express. “The commissioner or financial commissioner of the revenue department had the right to cancel the mutation in appeal and if the revenue officer has conducted the mutation process wrongly,” Khemka said.”

     

    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/officer-probing-vadra-land-deals-shifted-haryana-cites-hc-order/1017574/0

     

     

    Note the timing.

     

    It tells you what this is all about.

     

    The habit of victimizing Officers for taking action in questionable deals is not something new.

     

    It began during the reign of Indira Gandhi when an IAS Officer, Ramanathan a CBI officer enquiring into the details of Nagarvala scam where a Bank cashier was accused to have handed over  Rs. 68 Lacs in cash to Nagarvala, on the purported telephone call from Indira Gandhi.

     

    An Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer in Tamil Nadu has apparently run afoul of the state’s ruling DMK for implementing the Election Commission’s model code of conduct ahead of the April 13 elections.

     

    Irai Anbu another IAS officer was transferred by both the DMK and the AIADMK on enquiring into their corrupt deals.

     

    The list is endless in Tamil Nadu, so it is in the other States.

     

    The Haryana Government is quoting a High Court Order.

     

    “The state government, however, said that Khemka’s transfer complied with the directions of the Punjab and Haryana High Court passed on October 1. It said Khemka had himself wanted to be relieved of the charge of special collector which is traditionally held by the DG (Consolidation). The High Court ordered the state government to take a decision as early as possible and either give charge to another officer who can competently exercise the powers of a special collector or appoint someone to the post but not in any officiating or temporary capacity.

     

    The government said that Khemka’s order regarding the alleged undervaluation of property was issued on October 12 and cancellation of mutation was ordered on October 15, both after his transfer on October 11. The transfer of Khemka was neither out of any malice nor done abruptly but arose out of the above mentioned administrative exigency, it said.”

     

    Why take 11 days to issue the Order?

     

    Did not a compromise work out?

     

    I am reminded of  ‘Don’t Trust him, he protests too much”

     

    Related;

    “Official records show that Khemka, a computer engineer who got his first posting as IAS officer in 1993, was transferred 43 times in 19 years with most of his postings lasting merely months.

    During this period, he held eight posts in various departments for a month or less. Twelve of his 43 postings, incidentally, were in departments which dealt with ‘land’ in one way or the other – ranging from acquisition, consolidation, records and revenue management to development.

    Executive Record Sheet (ERS) of the ministry of personnel shows that Khemka – an IAS officer of the 1991 batch — held only two postings that lasted for over a year. He got the first such tenure (one-and-a-half years) during 2005-06 as chief administrator of the urban development department.”The Times of India)

     

     

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  • Radia ,Tata has no claim to privacy.

    Radia ‘s and Tata’s  claim to privacy does not hold water as their words involve policy making, attempt to bribe(refer perambalur Hospital equipment),controlling news, controlling media Funds and general disregard for Democracy in as much as they seem to manipulate Governmental policies,they , who have not been elected by people.

    The sheen of sleepless night of Tata on hearing about is lost when one hears about him in the tapes as well as his donation to Raja’s Constituency.

    As to Radia less said ,the better.

    Ordering IAS Officers, manipulating media, influencing policy decisions and brazen attempt to fix a price for every thing.

    rivacy is a right for private persons and also for private affairs of public persons. It is illogical and unreasonable for public persons to claim privacy for their public activities such as governance, policy making, industry, corporation, formation of ministry and politics. Privacy should not be mistaken with secret business operations causing harm to public institutions. Once a crime is committed, the suspicious persons need to be interrogated or investigated. Those suspected or involved cannot claim privacy and ask for protection of their identity, criminal secrets as privacy as part of right to life.

    Secret lobbying behind 2G spectrum corruption has to be probed into. Looking into authorized recorded tapes is a required and legitimate process, particularly if it involves the conversation of big people with political lobbyists, which insist on somebody to be made or not to be made the Telcom minister. If these tapes are blocked, the rich and powerful brokers would get emboldened to adjust the deals to escape from the long hands of law. Right to privacy is not secrecy or facility for hiding unethical deals and cornering state wealth through manipulations. If criminals or suspects seek this right no crime could be probed anywhere in the world.

    If Mr Ratan Tata, Ms Barkha Dutt, Mr Vir Singhvi and others who figured in Radia tapes and Ms Niira Radia herself feel defamed by these revelations, they can test their right to reputation by suing the publishers. Certainly they do not have Article 21 protection here. That right is available for victims of crime but not to criminals or their helpers.

    Privacy is an undefined right implied in Right to Life in general. It means the right to be let alone and its object is to protect inviolate personality. It can be regarded as a fundamental human right as the presumption that individuals should have an area of autonomous development, interaction and liberty, a “private sphere” with or without interaction with others and free from State intervention and free from excessive unsolicited intervention by other uninvited individuals. [1]

    Right to Information trumps Privacy

    Take a recent case in the UK where the media’s right to publish certain matters like names of accused was upheld in the general interests of public. Under the UK Human Rights Act 1998, Article 8.1 requires public authorities, including the court, to respect private and family life. Three claimants (brothers) were designated under the Terrorism (United Nations Measures) Order (SI 2006 No 2657) as persons whom the Treasury suspected of actually or potentially facilitating terrorist acts. Asset-freezing orders were made against these claimants. As other appellate courts confirmed these orders, the case reached Supreme Court, where it was held that the general public interest in publishing a report of the proceedings in which they were named was justified curtailing their rights to private life.

    A report on a study [2] on the interface between public interest, media and privacy for BBC and other State Commissions of UK concluded with a suggestion of  treating public interest as an exception to privacy: The general public put great value and importance on media information or coverage which promotes the general good, for the well-being of all. These include the identification of wrongdoing and of the wrongdoers themselves, with the media acting as guardians of shared moral and social norms. Under these conditions, and with suitable regard to the relative severity of the individual case, individuals’ privacy can be intruded upon – in extreme cases it should be – in the name of the greater good. [3]

    http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?269664

  • Radia lobbies for an IAS officer-Tapes.

    Radia lobbies for an IAS officer.

    In this conversation on June 19 with an unknown person, Radia pushes the case for a bureaucrat – industries secretary, West Bengal government, an IAS officer of the 1977 batch – who is applying to the center, “a very good guy”. Radia says she has talked to the minister about it – “he says we can talk about it.” She then fixes up a meeting with the unknown person.