New Delhi: Eight years after he was first appointed by the Centre as AYUSH secretary, lateral entrant Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha’s unusual eight-year run in the government has run into legal trouble.
Earlier this year, in March, a petition was filed in the Delhi High Court challenging Kotecha’s appointment in 2017 and the repeated extensions he has received since then, leading to his “indefinite continuance” in office.
His appointment, the petition contends, was done “without any recruitment notification, without adhering Govt. of India guidelines or rules allowing for a layman to be appointed to this high decision-making post”.
“He is neither an Officer of the Indian Administrative Services nor he is retired senior officer and even does not he have any special administrative expertise warranting his appointment as Secretary of the Ministry of AYUSH, a key and top-level post which was earlier headed by an IAS officer prior to his appointment in 2017,” the petition adds.
While the petition was filed in March 2025 at a time when Kotecha had received three extensions, the government gave him another extension of one year in May 2025.
The petitioner, Dr. V.P. Tyagi, a doctor and former president of the erstwhile Central Council for Indian Medicine, subsequently filed another petition stating that the extension granted to him yet again was arbitrary, and that while the retirement age for civil servants is 60, Kotecha turns 62 in July 2025.
In a hearing on 28 May, the Delhi High Court served a notice to the Centre on the plea.
In its response, the Centre filed an affidavit on 17 July, in which it stated that Kotecha’s appointment was made in the “larger public and national interest” on a contractual basis.
“In the exercise of executive sovereign power, the government is primarily guided by larger public and national interest and thus for appointment to senior level positions such as Secretary to Government of India – the width of subjective satisfaction in taking a decision in respect of such high posts is not! ought not to be fettered,” the Centre’s affidavit states.
ThePrint reached Kotecha for comment via WhatsApp messages. This report will be updated if and when he responds.
The petition
According to the Centre’s lateral entry rules for the positions of joint secretary, which it had advertised through the UPSC in several batches since 2018, a lateral entrant was to be appointed on contract for a period of three years, which was extendable up to five years. However, in the case of Kotecha, an Ayurvedic practitioner, this period has been extended “indefinitely” for the last eight years, the petition states.
“An appointment to a public post, especially one which is at such a high-level, ought to follow the cardinal principles of transparency and fairness,” the petition states. “But such principles have not been followed at any stage for the appointment of the Private Respondent.”
The roster system, which governs appointments and reservations, has been completely upset by the recruitment of the Private Respondent, the petition argues. Not only are the number of posts in the higher echelons of bureaucracy limited, but such recruitments also adversely affect affirmative action in government jobs at the top level, it pleads.
The post of AYUSH secretary is particularly significant because the secretary holds decision-making powers in the selection of persons for other government appointments, it adds.
For instance, the AYUSH secretary is a member of the search committee for the position of chairman, four presidents and 20 part-time members of the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM). The secretary is, moreover, the Convenor Member of the Search Committee for the chairperson of the National Commission for Homeopathy (NCH).
Interestingly, in March this year, the Supreme Court struck down the appointment of Dr Anil Khurana, the chairperson of the NCH.
The order had come on a plea filed by Dr Amaragouda L. Patil, who challenged Dr Khurana’s appointment on the grounds that he did not possess the requisite experience required under Section 4(2) and 19 of the National Commission for Homeopathy Act, 2020, respectively.
Similarly, in June this year, the Delhi High Court quashed the appointment of Vaidya Jayant Yeshwant Deopujari as chairperson of the NCISM on the grounds that he does not meet the qualification prescribed for appointment to the office.
The court held that Deopujari possessed a PhD degree, whereas the requisite degree was an MD or any other equivalent master’s degree in any discipline of the Indian System of Medicine.
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‘Resurgence’ of Indian medical systems
In its affidavit, the government has argued that since AYUSH, which was only a department until 2014, and now is a full-fledged ministry, “presents an absolutely a new vista of challenges as it seeks to chart a new course by actually consolidating and propagating Bharat’s ancient traditional knowledge of Indian Systems of Medicine.”
“The new resurgence since 2014 has necessarily impelled the government to take and adopt such measures so that the nascent Ministry of Ayush is guided and piloted well,” the government has said. “In this background the Respondents with utmost humility and deference submits that the Petitioner’s insistence on its purported grievances of the reliance on rules and procedure which are otherwise inapplicable is fallacious and misplaced.”
Kotecha’s appointment was made by a search-cum-selection committee formed in 2017, headed by the cabinet secretary under the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961.
“The Committee after following the due procedure had submitted its recommendation for consideration of the ACC (Appointments Committee of Cabinet), which as per the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961, is the competent authority for making Secretariat appointments to Joint Secretary level and above posts,” it said. “The Search and Selection Committee found Respondent No. 4 (Kotecha) as the suitable person who has relevant experience in the field.”
Moreover, the government has in the past too made appointments of experts such as Dr Manmohan Singh and Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia as secretaries to the GoI, the affidavit adds.
Besides, in several departments, like the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Legal Affairs, the Department of Agricultural Research and Education, the government selects secretaries through the search-cum-selection committee method.
As far as Kotecha’s age is concerned, the Centre has said that since his appointment is on a contract basis, his appointment and subsequent extensions are not covered under the provisions of the Fundamental Rules, which deal with the extension in service of serving government employees occupying certain limited posts beyond the age of superannuation.
‘An unprecedented run of eight years’
Kotecha’s appointment back in 2017 had raised eyebrows across the civil service fraternity as it was a rare appointment of a non-civil servant through lateral entry straight to the post of a secretary, the highest rank in the government of India.
Kotecha served as the vice chancellor of Jamnagar-based Gujarat Ayurveda University from 2013 to 2016 before his appointment as secretary in 2017.
He did his doctorate in Ayurveda Medicine (M.D. Ayurveda) in 1991, and went on to receive the Padma Shri in 2015.
He has authored two books—the Concept of Atattvabhinivesha in Ayurveda and A Beginner’s Guide to Ayurveda. The former deals with how Ayurvedic sources grappled with psychiatric disorders, and the many parallel treatments in Ayurveda and modern medicine.
According to a report in The Indian Express, Kotecha’s CV said that he was a “Trustee, World Ayurveda Foundation, an initiative of Vijnana Bharati, (and) Advisor to the Vijnana Bharati, the biggest science and technology movement in India”. Vijnana Bharati, one of the outfits of the RSS, describes itself on its website as “a science movement with swadeshi spirit”.
A retired health secretary to the government of India, who refused to comment on the appointment and extensions given to Kotecha, said that he has done “tremendous work” in the ministry in the last eight years.
“Nobody had even heard of AYUSH before him. He has done phenomenal work on integrative medicine, not only at the tertiary level, but also at the level of primary health centres,” the former secretary said.
However, another retired IAS officer, who requested anonymity, said that no matter what his merits, for a lateral entrant to be given a run of eight years is unprecedented. “Officers from the civil services don’t get more than two years in service on average…For a lateral entrant to be given eight years is very unusual,” he said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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