Officer Jayadev Sarangi who clashed with AAP govt retires

New Delhi: Delhi Directorate of Information and Publicity (DIP) Secretary Jayadev Sarangi, who had run-ins with the Arvind Kejriwal government on a range of issues, retired on Thursday.

In June 2017, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had directed the then chief secretary M M Kutty to replace Sarangi with another officer after Sarangi denied permission to a Facebook Live event of the deputy CM.

The IAS officer had also sent a notice to the ruling Aam Aadmi Party to pay Rs 97 crore that the government had spent on advertisements, violating the Supreme Court guidelines.

About his future assignments, Sarangi, who comes from a tribal-dominated region in Odisha, said he has not decided yet.

He said that he had unearthed Rs 4,000 crore land scam in 2004-05 when he was additional registrar co-operative society of Delhi. Sarangi said following the scam being exposed, builders had started demanding his ouster.

Sarangi, who was Goa excise commissioner in 2012, had also come under target when he had transferred several excise officers in one day, irking liquor mafia in the state.

He has been DIG (Prison), SP (Tihar), IG (Tihar), Transport Commissioner (Andaman and Nicobar), in-charge of Panchayat Raj department (Andaman and Nicobar).

He said that he had worked to increase the budget of Andaman and Nicobar's Panchyat Raj department from Rs 5 crore to Rs 100 crore.

The Union Home Ministry had in August 1996 circulated Sarangi's crime prevention report to all chief secretaries for their suggestion.