Three arrests in three weeks. That is enough to rattle any cadre. In Haryana’s IAS ranks, it has done more—it has set officer against officer.
Ram Kumar Singh, Pankaj Aggarwal and Pardeep Kumar are behind bars in the Rs 645-crore IDFC First Bank-AU Small Finance Bank fraud case. Five other officers—Vineet Garg, Mohammed Shayin, Saket Kumar, D.K. Behera and Mani Ram—face possible prosecution after the state cleared sanction against them under Section 17-A of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Five of the eight met Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini before Aggarwal’s arrest, seeking his intervention. Saini heard them out, made no promise. Aggarwal and Pardeep Kumar were arrested soon after.
Now, the accused are pointing fingers. Pardeep Kumar’s anticipatory bail plea blamed then Haryana State Pollution Control Board chairman Vineet Garg, who is himself under the CBI scanner. Behera has told commissioner Saket Kumar’s office that a “telephonic discussion” preceded the fund transfers, and has written to Haryana director Anish Yadav demanding an internal inquiry into gaps he found in file notings.
One officer is on long leave. Another was hospitalised in Mohali with stress.
A retired officer told ThePrint that the state has, in the past, denied sanction to prosecute IAS officers in cases as serious as this—citing the Vijay Singh Dahiya and Jaivir Singh Arya graft cases, both eventually discharged after the government refused sanction.
This time, the bureaucracy isn’t closing ranks. It’s cracking.
Underlying the unease, officers said, is genuine surprise that the case went to the CBI at all.
Nearly Rs 504 crore of the Rs 645 crore involved belonged to Haryana, and the amount had already been recovered by the state’s own Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, which had registered the FIR and arrested most of the accused before the case was handed over.
Officers point to the Ram Mandir theft case in Ayodhya, which has drawn global attention yet was left to a state SIT, as a case they believe was more deserving of central scrutiny. A nearly identical Rs 160-crore fraud at Kotak Mahindra Bank, they note, has stayed with the state vigilance bureau. That contrast has left the cadre even more uneasy.
‘P for Pandit’
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav popularised the slogan “PDA” which originally stood for Pichhde, Dalit and Alpsankhyak (Backward, Dalit and Minorities).
Later, while launching the Vision India outreach programme aimed at engaging intellectuals, the SP also expanded the acronym to Peace, Development and Ascent. Now, as the party seeks to strengthen its outreach to the Brahmin community, Akhilesh has begun adding another interpretation to the acronym.
At meetings attended with Brahmin leaders, he has been saying: “Aap sab dhyan rakhein… PDA mein P for Pandit hai (all of you should remember… in PDA, the P also stands for Pandit).”
The messaging has coincided with the party giving prominence to two young Brahmin leaders, Pawan Pandey in Ayodhya and Pooja Shukla in Lucknow. Pandey has emerged as one of the party’s most vocal faces on the Ayodhya Ram Mandir donation controversy, while Shukla has been coordinating programmes of Shankaracharya Avimukteshwaranand, who has been critical of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh.
Party insiders see these moves as part of SP’s broader attempt to strengthen its appeal among Brahmins and project the Yogi government as being insensitive to the community’s concerns. Against this backdrop, Akhilesh’s repeated emphasis on “P for Pandit” is drawing increasing attention in UP’s political discourse.
Andhra dy CM under the knife
Andhra deputy chief minister K. Pawan Kalyan has undergone surgery for rotator cuff injury in one shoulder at Mumbai. His other shoulder also requires surgery for injuries originally got in 2016. The rotator cuff injuries got aggravated in later years due to Jana Sena Party cadres and fans pulling his arms during events ranging from his Porata Yatra to the recent election campaign. The second surgery is scheduled to be conducted after two months.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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