When state is an opponent of law
30 July 2013 10:39 PM GMT
The suspension of the Indian Administration Service (IAS) officer Durga Shakti Nagpal over her taking on the sand mining mafia in Uttar Pradesh is a clear evidence that institutionalised corruption is here to stay in this country. The brave bureaucrat, who has been backed up by the IAS officers in the state, is, however, an exemplary officer, whose honesty and integrity must be commended.
Despite being victimised by the powerful sand mafia, that wanted to build a mosque in a government-owned land in Greater Noida, Nagpal had held her forst and had refused to buckle under pressure from the builders’ lobby. Nagpal, 28, had ordered the demolition of the mosque because it’s illegal to build religious monuments on government land, given India’s secular credentials. However, the officer was taken to task for her sheer grit, and she was ‘punished’ by the state government for standing up for the right cause.
It is beyond a straw of doubt that DS Nagpal has ended up upsetting the nefarious corporate-political nexus that ensures the unsustainable and illegal construction spree over land acquired at throw away prices from the government or belonging to the state altogether. Nagpal, a 2009-batch IAS officer, however, had the temerity to counter the power builders’ bloc, despite her being a new warrior to the battlefield that is the construction lobby.
Evidently, Nagpal’s case is symptomatic of the wide-scale rot that is chipping away at the country’s fundamentals. Honesty and integrity, clearly, have long stopped being a virtue in a country where the ruling party at the central and state levels are neck-deep in corruption cases and scams.
Nagpal’s stance, much in the footsteps of the former CAG Vinod Rai, has been a courageous one, albeit it was brutally cracked down by the lobbies that decide everything starting from the infrastructure tenders to blatant minority appeasement in the form of religious doles such as building mosques on state lands. Hence, in the light of the revelations, the UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s empty attempt at placating the public outcry at the undeserved suspension falls flat. The ‘administrative decision’ is obviously dictated by the sand mafia
themselves.  Â
Despite being victimised by the powerful sand mafia, that wanted to build a mosque in a government-owned land in Greater Noida, Nagpal had held her forst and had refused to buckle under pressure from the builders’ lobby. Nagpal, 28, had ordered the demolition of the mosque because it’s illegal to build religious monuments on government land, given India’s secular credentials. However, the officer was taken to task for her sheer grit, and she was ‘punished’ by the state government for standing up for the right cause.
It is beyond a straw of doubt that DS Nagpal has ended up upsetting the nefarious corporate-political nexus that ensures the unsustainable and illegal construction spree over land acquired at throw away prices from the government or belonging to the state altogether. Nagpal, a 2009-batch IAS officer, however, had the temerity to counter the power builders’ bloc, despite her being a new warrior to the battlefield that is the construction lobby.
Evidently, Nagpal’s case is symptomatic of the wide-scale rot that is chipping away at the country’s fundamentals. Honesty and integrity, clearly, have long stopped being a virtue in a country where the ruling party at the central and state levels are neck-deep in corruption cases and scams.
Nagpal’s stance, much in the footsteps of the former CAG Vinod Rai, has been a courageous one, albeit it was brutally cracked down by the lobbies that decide everything starting from the infrastructure tenders to blatant minority appeasement in the form of religious doles such as building mosques on state lands. Hence, in the light of the revelations, the UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s empty attempt at placating the public outcry at the undeserved suspension falls flat. The ‘administrative decision’ is obviously dictated by the sand mafia
themselves.  Â
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