The Indian government has a talent for turning administrative postings into political theatre. The latest case is the appointment of IAS officer Sanjeev Khirwar as the commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
He is nationally remembered for the 2022 controversy. The Delhi government-run Thyagraj Stadium used to be allegedly emptied of athletes so that he could walk his dog. The former Principal Secretary (Revenue) and his wife—also an IAS officer—were then transferred to Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, respectively.
Now the “dog lover” has come back to run a city that is permanently at war with stray dogs; the very subject that animates residents’ associations, animal welfare groups, and courts. In an age where a headline can become a permanent tattoo, the appointment is also a reminder that the system does rehabilitate—sometimes quietly, sometimes brazenly.
Yet there is a deeper story here, beyond memes and moral outrage. Even if we assume the stadium episode happened exactly as athletes alleged, the punishment meted out to the IAS couple seems disproportionate—especially when “bigger” defaults, defalcations and administrative failures often lie unnoticed in government files.
The viral controversy
The Thyagraj Stadium episode erupted in May 2022 after athletes claimed that they were asked to wind up training early so that Khirwar could walk his German Shepherd on the track. The allegation mattered because it was about a public facility, young athletes, and the old Indian grievance that the VIP system always finds a way to elbow citizens aside. Khirwar denied wrongdoing.
What followed was swift, visible action. Within hours, both officers were transferred out of Delhi—Khirwar to Ladakh, and his wife, Rinku Dhugga, to Arunachal Pradesh. The speed of the response was motivated by the public outrage at the time.
Transfers, of course, are the administrative equivalent of a wink. Officially routine; practically punitive. They punish without proving. They signal without adjudicating. And they allow everyone to move on—until social media decides not to.
Rehabilitation for him, retirement for her
Fast-forward to January 2026. The Union Home Ministry appointed Khirwar as MCD Commissioner “with immediate effect and until further orders”. One can argue that the MCD needs exactly what a seasoned administrator can bring: financial discipline, sanitation reform, road management, inter-agency coordination, and sheer stamina. Even press coverage of his return has framed his immediate priorities around roads and stray animals—two big civic headaches of the national capital.
The larger, post-unification MCD (excluding New Delhi Municipal Council’s Lutyens’ enclave) is no small assignment. Whatever one thinks of the man or the meme, this is a post where competence will be tested daily—and publicly.
But the spouse’s trajectory is the part that should disturb anyone who cares about proportionality and due process.
Rinku Dhugga, also a 1994-batch AGMUT IAS officer, was compulsorily retired by the Union Government in August 2023, on the basis of “public interest”.
Compulsory retirement is a curious instrument: formally “non-penal”, yet professionally catastrophic. It avoids the discipline of a full enquiry, but it can end a career with the weight of stigma. It is the State’s way of saying: we do not need to prove; we only need to be “satisfied”.
Here is where the case becomes truly instructive. Dhugga challenged her premature retirement before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), Principal Bench, New Delhi, in 2024.
On 8 August 2025, CAT pronounced its order. It quashed and set aside the impugned orders and directed reinstatement forthwith with all consequential benefits, to be completed within four weeks.
It is a judicial rebuke of the decision-making process—at least as CAT saw it. The government challenged it and what happened next is unknown. Was Dhugga reinstated? The public record is not clear.
The optics are harsh: the husband returns to an apex civic post in Delhi; the wife—despite a tribunal order in her favour—appears, at least externally, still removed from service.
Reacting to outrage
Public outrage is a poor architect of proportionality: the Thyagraj Stadium episode became a symbol precisely because it was visually simple and morally legible. Young athletes versus power, public infrastructure versus private convenience. But governance cannot be run on symbols alone. When the State reacts chiefly to what trends, it risks making an example of individuals while leaving deeper, costlier rot untouched—procurement manipulation, revenue leakages, construction collusion, opaque contracting, municipal financial mismanagement—wrongs that are slow-moving, document-heavy, politically entangled, and therefore rarely “viral”, lying buried in files.
The result is an inversion: hyper-activity in headline cases, lethargy where public money actually bleeds. In such headline storms, punishment can turn performative—overnight transfers, careers “managed”, reputations frozen in a single label, one person quietly rehabilitated while another is “weeded out”.
Even if the alleged misconduct is taken as fact, the real question is proportionality: while immediate damage control may justify a transfer, long-term penalties—especially compulsory retirement—demand a far higher bar of fairness and transparency.
Also read: Section 17A PC Act is at a constitutional crossroads. 5 recommendations for SC Bench
Punishing viral wrongdoings
Sanjeev Khirwar’s return to Delhi is not, by itself, proof of innocence or guilt. It is evidence of institutional confidence—or institutional amnesia. His performance at MCD may yet justify the decision.
But the couple’s combined story should force a broader reckoning. Our administrative system needs a steadier moral compass: one that does not reserve its sharpest teeth for the most photogenic outrage, while treating larger, costlier governance failures as routine background noise.
The State must punish wrongdoing, yes—but with due process, proportionality, and equal treatment. Otherwise, “accountability” becomes just another form of theatre: loud when the cameras are on, silent when the files are thick, and cruelest when it lands unevenly on those made into examples.
KBS Sidhu is a former IAS officer who retired as Special Chief Secretary, Punjab. He tweets @kbssidhu1961. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)