Chandigarh: Being in the spotlight isn’t new for Krishan Kumar, Punjab’s principal secretary of water resources. Now, the 1997 batch IAS officer is in the eye of a storm amid an ongoing slugfest between the Opposition and the Bhagwant Mann government over what caused the devastating floods in the state.
The Opposition is demanding Kumar’s immediate transfer, saying he did not act in time to prepare for the ferocity of the monsoons. But the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is standing behind Kumar, saying he “did his best” to prepare for the floods.
Kumar, who served in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) from 2011 to 2015, has a reputation for being an uncompromising and disciplined administrator, known for spearheading the state’s educational reforms when he was education secretary from 2017 to 2022.
He has also been at the forefront of implementing CM Mann’s flagship project of reviving non-functional river water channels at the tail ends of canals in order to improve irrigation.
“This is the same Krishan Kumar who put every government school master (teacher) in Punjab to work. He was the education secretary in your (Capt Amarinder-led Congress) government,” Mann said in the Punjab assembly Friday. “Don’t break the hearts of officers who work.”
Mann was replying to Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa, who launched a sharp attack on Kumar, saying he was responsible for what he called “man-made floods” in Punjab.
“He (Krishan Kumar) has always caused trouble. He is known to be a spoilsport. He will bring only bad name to you. He should be transferred,” said Bajwa.
The minister for irrigation and water resources, Barinder Goyal, also defended Kumar in the special session of the Vidhan Sabha that began Friday to discuss flooding and rehabilitation.
“You are demanding his resignation by speaking lies,” Goyal told the Opposition. “If anything, this department under him has worked more in three years than what this department has done the past 30 years of Congress and Akali governments,” he said in the assembly Monday.
Bajwa, however, continued with his attack. “Almost 8,000 employees of Krishan Kumar’s department have been charge-sheeted in the past few years. No officer wants to work with him.”
ThePrint reached Kumar for comment through calls and WhatsApp messages. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
Also Read: Did ignored BBMB, IMD warnings aggravate flood damage? Anatomy of Punjab deluge
At odds with politicians
A stickler for rules, Kumar is known in bureaucratic circles to upset politicians by refusing to give in to unreasonable or unlawful demands.
The first attack on him for having “caused floods” was launched by the AAP MLA from Sanour, Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra, last month.
According to Pathanmajra, Kumar’s department did not do anything despite multiple requests to get the river water channels cleaned.
“Other than this one officer, all other officers are fine. He thinks he knows everything, and India was created only after he was born. He rotates the issue in such a manner that whatever you ask for is never done,” Pathanmajra told the media during a visit to one of the river water channels on 31 August.
“He should be shifted to a place where he is given no work except to go fishing,” he added.
Two days after he criticised his own party’s government over the flood situation in Punjab, Pathanmajra was booked in a three-year-old rape case. He escaped while being taken to the police after his arrest, and has since been sending out video messages from an undisclosed location saying MLAs should launch a rebellion against the AAP’s Delhi leadership.
Kumar has also played a key role in Punjab’s water dispute with Haryana, doing all the homework for Mann to take on the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) and Haryana.
In May, Mann led a protest against the BBMB for giving additional river water to Haryana from Punjab’s quota of river water. The BBMB distributes river waters according to pre-decided quotas divided between Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan.
Mann also locked horns with the Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini over the matter.
During BBMB meetings with various stakeholder states—Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi—Kumar was a vocal critic of what Punjab calls the BBMB’s bias against it.
Kumar’s close aides told ThePrint that on 30 April, as the stakeholder states voted during a BBMB meeting to release additional water to Haryana from Punjab’s quota, Kumar argued Punjab’s case for over five hours, finally leaving the meeting in a huff after putting a three-page objection on record.
Kumar, who was posted in the water resources department almost immediately after the AAP came to power in March 2022, was tasked by Mann to spearhead his pet project of reviving non-functional river water channels at the tail ends of canals for irrigation.
Mann has claimed that in the past three years, more than 60 percent of such non-functional channels have been cleared, because of which river water is even reaching those agricultural lands that depended on tubewell water for irrigation.
Water resources minister Goyal told the assembly Monday that in the next few months, more than 75 percent of such channels would be functional.
Education reforms
Kumar is most widely known for his stint in the education department. He served both as a director general of school education (2007-2010) and later as the education secretary (2017-2022).
Credited with overhauling the government school education system in Punjab, Kumar brought palpable change in the quality of primary and secondary education in the state, launching ‘Padho Punjab’, a targeted campaign focusing on teaching Mathematics and English.
He enforced compulsory attendance for school teachers and hundreds of non-performing teachers were disciplined.
Teachers’ unions went on strike against him, and for a large part of his posting in the education department, a perpetual dharna outside his office door was a common sight.
He revamped school buildings across the state, getting them painted in vibrant colours to make them attractive for students while also turning them into smart schools with all educational tools and facilities to help government schools compete with private schools.
However, Kumar’s insistence on sticking to rules on recruitment of teachers and their transfers made him hugely unpopular among them and politicians whose requests he is known to often turn down.
An electronics engineer from Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) in Rohtak, in his home state of Haryana, Kumar also has a Master’s degree in economics. For a brief period of less than one year in 2016-2017, he was posted as secretary of expenditure with the Punjab government.
He remained in the PMO from 2011 to 2015 before serving in the Department of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution in the Government of India. He then returned to the state’s finance department.
Apart from his contribution to education, Kumar is also known for developing the pioneering ‘Nawanshahr model’ of curbing female foeticide when he was deputy commissioner of Nawanshahr in 2006-2007.
The innovative campaign involved reporting of every pregnancy in the state to the health department and constant monitoring till delivery.
After the success of the experiment in Nawanshahr, then chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh ordered that the model be replicated across the state.
In 2007, the model was recognised by the Union Ministry of Health as one of the more effective ways to curb female foeticide, and states across the country were advised to study and replicate it.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)