IAS officer Varsha Joshi was transferred from the post of Commissioner, North Delhi Municipal Corporation, to the Delhi government by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal here on Thursday.
The vocal 1995 AGMUT batch officer’s abrupt transfer has raised questions about the manner in which it was carried out.
Ms. Joshi was one of the senior members of the bureaucracy when the then Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash was allegedly assaulted at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s official residence by AAP MLAs in February 2018. She took charge of the North DMC, which runs six hospitals in the city in December 2018.
A former Transport Commissioner and Power Secretary, she had briefly held additional charge of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) after the transfer of the previous commissioner, Puneet Goyal.
The current SDMC commissioner Gyanesh Bharti has been assigned additional charge of the North DMC. Ms. Joshi described her tenure as “very satisfying indeed”and said it had “been a great ride with a great team”.
These achievements, she said, included management of the Bhalaswa dumpsite and its biomining, the pedestrianisation of Ajmal Khan Road in Karol Bagh, streamlining of administration and finalising rosters, acquisition of new vehicles for maintenance work, ensuring ODF certification, constructing 500 additional toilets, improving the corporation’s website and cleaning up the civic body’s delivery of services with transfers and rule 56 J under which problematic officials were weeded out.
