New Delhi: Not many civil servants have had a career like that of Ashok Khemka, the 1991-batch IAS officer who was transferred Monday for the 55th time. During his service career spanning a little over three decades, Khemka’s average stint in a department averages out to nearly six months.
Opting for an ironic choice of words, Khemka wrote on Twitter that he had been “once again archived” — a reference to his new posting as additional chief secretary of the Haryana government’s archives department.
He went further to add, “A Govt officer is assigned min. 40 hours work per week. But there is a new trick in the book to tackle the honest and the unyielding. Assign little work, bypassing Civil Services Board. Destroy self-respect and heap indignities. Whose interest does it serve?”
Khemka was reportedly rated 9.9 out of 10 in his latest performance appraisal report.
Just three months earlier, Haryana minister Anil Vij had described Khemka — then additional chief secretary, science and technology department — as a “rare breed officer” and a “gem”.
According to sources in the Haryana government, the order for Khemka’s transfer was issued days after he wrote to the government saying he didn’t have enough work following the merger of the science and technology department with the higher education department.
Khemka first made headlines in 2012 for cancelling the mutation of a Gurugram land deal linked to former Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law industrialist Robert Vadra. Mutation is part of the official process to transfer ownership of land.
Over the past decade, Khemka seems to have racked up more transfers than any other civil servant, given inconsequential postings with each transfer.
In all, Khemka has been “archived”, if one can use his own words, on four occasions during his career. This will be his third posting in this department after the Manohar Lal Khattar-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government first came to power in the state in 2014.
He has served as director general and later principal secretary of the archives department in the past and was first transferred to the department in 2013 when Congress was in power in Haryana.
Sources familiar with its contents said the IAS officer indicated in his letter to the chief secretary that the workload of officials in the science and technology department “was not more than 2-3 hours per week”.
“It is suggested that an officer of the rank of ACS (additional chief secretary) may be assigned department(s) with a total workload of at least 40 hours a week,” said the letter, according to sources. It went further to add, “If there is no sufficient workload for cadre officers, non-cadre officers may be removed from Administrative Secretaries and repatriated to their own Departments.”
This is not the first time Khemka has expressed unhappiness over having been ‘overlooked’.
On October 19, 2022, Khemka had said in a tweet, “Congratulations to my batchmates newly appointed as Secretaries to GOI (Government of India)! While this is an occasion for merry, it brings equal measure of despondency for one’s own self having been left behind. Straight trees are always cut first. No regrets. With renewed resolve, I shall persist.”
“Tried hard to address corruption and bring reforms in Transport despite severe limitations and entrenched interests. Moment is truly painful,” he wrote in a tweet in 2015 after he was posted as secretary, archaeology and museums department and director general, archaeology and museums.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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