Dr Ghanshyam’s unique ‘treatment’ to ‘ailing’ officials creates ‘controversy’!

Jaipur: An interesting and shocking incident, of which there might not be another example, has come to light in Panchayati Raj department. The Director of the department, at first, issued 94 show cause notices to five officials, and then issued a single order to drop the notices and gave a lifeline to the officials. Now that this matter has come to the notice of the state government, it has been reopened and action under 16cc is being taken against the officials.

The matter pertains to the year 2021 when promotee IAS Dr Ghanshyam was the Director of Panchayati Raj Department. The Director, in six months between February 2021 to August 2021, issued 94 show cause notices against five officials identified as Khemraj Panwar (3 notices), Ramjilal Meena (12 notices), Nan Kishore Sharma (19 notices), Maharam Yadav (17 notices) and Suresh Kumar Bunkar (44 notices).

But then don’t know what happened, on August 19, 2021, Dr Ghanshyam issued a single order and closed all the notice action against the officials while giving them a verbal warning. Ghanshyam’s action is uncommon, wrong and creates suspicion. Firstly, these five officials were posted at headquarters and continues carrying out mistakes one after the other and the Director kept on giving them show cause notices. What is interesting here is the fact that none of the official answered even a single notice. In such a situation, why didn’t the Director take an even more strict action against them?

Then what happened suddenly that the Director felt certain kindness for them and recused them of all their ‘wrongdoings’? In fact, he only gave a verbal warning and let them go. Later in April 2022, Ghanshyam was transferred also.

People are questioning if a ‘deal’ has been struck behind the curtains or if such an action was taken without the full knowledge of the repercussions of taking such a step? Those in the know-ho of administrative work claim that there is no provision of verbal warning in the rules and regulations. According to the rules, every notice should be dealt separately in separate files. Then different orders have to be issued for different officers.

Actually Dr Ghanshyam is originally a doctor from Medical Services. He became IAS from subordinate service quota in January 2021, thus it is possible that he does not have much knowledge about administrative work. However, his actions have become laughable in the department.

Due to a complaint last month, the matter has come to the notice of the state government and ACS Abhay Kumar, taking cognisance in the matter, has reopened the matter and action under 16cc is being taken against chagesheeted officials.