IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal is a pawn in a larger political game

Samajwadi Party leader Narendra Singh Bhati’s public bragging about the suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal is indicative of the rot that has set in Uttar Pradesh. He said he “got that budtameez aurat (badly behaved woman) suspended in just 41 minutes.” This bragging comes from a man who lost the last Parliamentary elections from Gautam Buddh Nagar (Noida) on a Samajwadi Party ticket and had unsuccessfully contested the 2007 assembly election from Bulandshahar. The Association for Democratic Reforms’ National Election Watch lists some of the criminal cases that have been filed against Bhati.  They include attempt to murder, kidnapping, rioting with deadly weapon, causing hurt to deter public servant and so on. [caption id=“attachment_1005991” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Durga Shakti Nagpal. Ibnlive[/caption] Bhati does not figure anywhere in the hierarchy of the Samajwadi Party, and because of that the incident has far deeper implications. If a self-indulgent leader like Bhati —  who is just the chairman of the UP Agro Corporation and is believed to be a patron of illegal sand mining in the Noida region — can have an IAS officer sacked in a matter of minutes, who is safe? If, as Bhati claims, he made a phone call to Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav at 10.30 pm and got his way, what will happen if a top Samajwadi party leader decided that an officer had not behaved well with him or her? This question has disturbed a section of UP’s IAS officers. The suspension came on a day when Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was not in Lucknow. He was travelling to Bangalore and Mulayam Singh was also supposed to go there. Chief Secretary, Javed Usmani, a 1978 batch IAS officer, was on leave and Alok Ranjan, also a 1978 batch IAS officer, was acting Chief Secretary. Ranjan, however, was the only officer of the 1978 batch UP cadre who was not empanelled for a secretary’s post by the Union government because his name figured in the NAFED scam when he was Managing Director of that organisation. Some media reports suggested that Usmani, who was on central deputation since 2004, had been persuaded by Mulayam Singh to take up the chief secretary’s job, but felt “suffocated” in the present regime. It is not without reason that only five out of 21 secretary-level officers of the UP IAS cadre are serving in the state. It’s also highly unusual for the Chief Minister, or someone as powerful, to have opened the locked office of the Chief Secretary on Saturday night to issue orders suspending Durga Shakti Nagpal and informing the media about it at around 1 am on Sunday. No notice, no inquiry report, no charges, no explanation was given or sought — there was just an order. Forget about service rules, the basic courtesies of natural justice were not followed. Narendra Bhati claims the suspension order was typed and sent to the District Magistrate, Noida, by 11.11 pm. But, what is even more alarming is that he claims he was informed “officially” by the SSP and Director General of Police, about it. Why should he be officially informed, and that too by senior police officers? Can a Samajwadi Party leader who lost the parliamentary elections command the UP bureaucracy? If so, then what makes him so powerful? For the record, ADR says Bhati has immovable property of only Rs 11 lakh, including 5 kg of gold and 2 kg of silver owned by his wife. Apart from giving a communal twist to the suspension order — the IAS official is said to have created communal tension by demolishing a masjid wall — Samajwadi Party leaders have sent a message that the rule of the clan prevails over the rule of law in UP. A section of officers is also at a loss about who is the boss in Akhilesh’s regime – Mulayam Singh Yadav as the unquestioned Supremo, Akhilesh Yadav as CM, Shivpal Yadav and Ramgopal Yadav as Yadav clan honchos, or Azam Khan as the regime’s powerful Muslim face? The Samajwadi Party is treating the suspension as a prestige issue, it is also using it to polarise Muslim votes. The alleged demolition of a mosque wall — when actually there was no mosque, but an illegal structure built on government land — in the month of Ramazan is being portrayed as a great crime. Akhilesh Yadav has chosen to go on the offensive, championing the cause of the mosque, secularism and “communal harmony” instead of admitting that he had acted on the basis of a motivated piece of advice from a self-indulgent party leader. He talked tough against UP bureaucrats. Several of his party leaders spoke less like public representatives and more like overlords. The BSP is trying hard to show that the Samajwadi Party is “misguiding Muslims” about the mosque, when the actual issue was protection of the sand mafia. Incidentally, while the suspension of Durga Nagpal was generating a controversy in Lucknow and elsewhere in the country on Sunday, Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh were attending an iftaar party in Bangalore. At a brief interaction with the media after namaaz, Mulayam Singh claimed no government could be formed at the Centre after the next Parliamentary elections without the Samajwadi Party. “We are working hard to get as many Lok Sabha seats as possible, as no government can be formed without our party’s support at the centre,” he claimed. The Samajwadi Party leadership knows that the BJP’s projection of Narendra Modi as PM candidate has changed the game in Uttar Pradesh. In the event of a Modi-centric election, a Muslim polarisation is expected to happen, and the Samajwadi Party wants to ensure that this polarisation happens in its favour rather than in the favour of the BSP or the Congress. However, the Samajwadi leader’s claims about the mosque could have a default beneficiary, the BJP led by its new campaign committee chief Narendra Modi.