The Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) has issued a notice to the Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for alleged misrepresentation of facts with regard to the job profile of Magsaysay awardee and bureaucrat Sanjiv Chaturvedi.
According to Mr. Chaturvedi, who was removed as chief vigilance officer at AIIMS, this was not only ‘in blatant violation’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policy of ‘Minimum Government And Maximum Governance’, but exemplified the general nature of the post of Deputy Secretary, as many as 90 of which were ‘lying vacant in various central ministries’.
A Principal Bench consisting of Justice Syed Rafat Alam and P.K. Basu has listed the matter for October 15 in response to a plea by the 2002-batch Indian Forest Service (IFS) official, who is currently posted as Deputy Secretary at AIIMS, alleging that his post was deliberately rendered ‘redundant and infructuous’ in order to ‘protect large-scale corruption’.
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In his plea, which was filed before the Bench on October 1, Mr. Chaturvedi argued that an order dated June 23, 2011, issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare mentioned management and control of the institute, coordination with multi-disciplinary experts, management of infrastructure projects and their timely completion as work allocation for an officer joining at the new post of Deputy Secretary or as a Director.
“Till this date, since the joining of the applicant on 29.06.2012,” Mr. Chaturvedi argued, the AIIMS administration had not issued any order to assign any of these responsibilities to him. In addition to these, Mr. Chaturvedi submitted, his appointment as CVO also entitled him to responsibilities related to the General and Estate Sections as well as his duty as Nodal officer for Grievance of Officers.
These, he submitted, were withdrawn from him following subsequent orders to this effect issued between July 7, 2012 and May 15, 2015.
The director of the institute has been accused of misrepresenting facts