Upholding the law, victimised by netas

Regrettably, Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, has under its current rulers reverted to its unfortunate reputation acquired under the rule of the same party earlier — of being one where criminals are not deterred by the restraining hand of the law.

The way the state’s political leadership has handled the case of young IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal does little to soften that image. Ms Nagpal appears to have become a pawn in the Samajwadi Party’s politics against the Congress after that party’s chief Sonia Gandhi, in good faith, urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to help the young IAS officer under the rules if feasible, since the subdivisional magistrate of UP’s Gautam Buddh Nagar district is in serious trouble for no fault of hers. The hardening of Lucknow’s
attitude, in response to this, has led to the chargesheeting of the 28-year-old officer.
While the cadre-controlling authority in the case of the all-India services like the IAS is the Centre’s department of personnel and training, the state to which an officer is assigned has considerable latitude in assessing an officer’s progress through his/her career, except when the individual is on deputation to the Centre. This is a difficult situation for a genuinely aggrieved officer to be in if the political executive of a state tries to victimise her, as seems to be happening in this case.
In this background, Mrs Gandhi’s solicitude can hardly be called exceptional. Ms Nagpal’s courage in facing up to the sand-mining and land development mafias of the Noida-Greater Noida area bordering Delhi has earned her the admiration and goodwill of ordinary citizens across the country, and reportedly also of members of the judiciary, not to say the more idealistic among civil servants. It is clear, of course, that they cannot intervene unless the officer goes to court. Under the existing rules, the Centre, too, may find it difficult to do much unless the officer makes a representation.
To most people, it is evident that the UP government’s charge against
Ms Nagpal of permitting a potential communal situation to develop ahead of Id is just a trick to get her off the back of the mafias who felt threatened by her energetic attitude of upholding the law, and in the process earn brownie points with the minority community in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. It is a huge pity that it is petty contrivance of this nature that is cited these days as being the stuff of secularism, and is becoming increasingly acceptable political fare.