The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has turned down Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s request for assigning Sanjiv Chaturvedi, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer known for his action on several cases of corruption, as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) in his office.
Mr. Kejriwal had written an impassioned letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, requesting the services of Mr. Chaturvedi as his OSD and, some say, as the new chief of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Delhi, a body with which Mr. Kejriwal has had run-ins.
A senior official in the DoPT told The Hindu that under the current rules, the transfer of Mr. Chaturvedi, who joined the IFS as part of the Haryana cadre but subsequently took a transfer to the Uttarakhand cadre owing to “extreme hardship,” was not possible.
“The inter-cadre deputation of Sanjiv Chaturvedi from Uttarakhand to the government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) is not permissible, at this stage, under Rule 6(1) of the IFS (Cadre) Rules. The rule requires an officer to complete the mandatory cooling-off in his cadre between two stints of deputation. Mr. Chaturvedi, on completion of his Central deputation on June 28 this year, has to do the mandatory cooling-off period of three years in his cadre (now Uttarakhand), before he is eligible for inter-cadre deputation to Delhi,” the official said.
Having changed his cadre from Haryana to Uttarakhand, Mr. Chaturvedi, of the rank of deputy secretary, is yet to serve in that State and had been attached to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) since June 29, 2012.
The DoPT official termed ‘flawed’ Mr. Kejriwal’s argument that a DoPT rule allowed the transfer of an officer as personal staff to a Minister without the requirement of a cooling-off period. “DoPT’s guidelines of May 26, 2014 are not relevant to this case as they relate to appointment of officers on the personal staff of Union Ministers. Mr. Chaturvedi’s case is of inter-cadre deputation and is not covered by these guidelines.”
