Nearly two months after being suspended ostensibly for ordering the demolition of the wall of a mosque during the month of Ramzan, IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal was on Sunday reinstated in service.
The Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh, under fire for inaction during the recent riots in Muzaffarnagar, announced on Sunday that the suspension of the sub-divisional magistrate was being revoked.
Nagpal had been suspended on July 27. The reason cited was that she had ordered the demolition of a wall near a mosque in Gautam Buddh Nagar. In fact, she had taken on a politically powerful sand mafia, according to her supporters.
On Saturday, Durga Shakti Nagpal and her husband Abhishek Singh reportedly met Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.
Nagpal will be attached to the board of revenue until she is given a fresh appointment.
A 2010-batch IAS officer, Nagpal’s suspension sparked off massive outrage across the country. While the UP government claimed the suspension was an administrative decision taken in view of a possible endangerment to communal harmony, a video of a senior Samajwadi Party leader emerged in which he claimed he had engineered her suspension.