 "Sanjiv Chaturvedi")
After four orders from the Central Administrative Tribunal, the appointments committee of cabinet headed by the Prime Minister finally took a call on Sanjiv Chaturvedi’s transfer to Arvind Kejriwal’s office. The committee rejected Delhi government and Chaturvedi’s request.
At the end of an atypical detailed two-page order, dated June 21, the ACC (Appointments Committee of the Cabinet) said, “Keeping in view all the facts and circumstances of the case, the ACC has declined the proposal for inter-cadre deputation of Shri Sanjiv Chaturvedi from Uttarakhand cadre to the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi.”
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had asked for Chaturvedi’s services as his officer on special duty in February 2015. Chaturvedi, positioned at AIIMS, Delhi, but removed from the post of chief vigilance officer and fighting several cases against the Union government, had applied for the position which only the Prime Minister-headed ACC has the power to clear.
But his application remained pending for a decision by the ACC for more than a year. He repeatedly went to the tribunal with the plea that the ACC take a call on it one way or the other. In June 2016, in its last of the four orders favouring Chaturvedi, the tribunal gave the ACC a three week deadline to decide.
Consequently, rejecting the proposal, the ACC gave two reasons. It said Chaturvedi had not got the mandatory clearance from his parent cadre Uttarakhand. It also said that Chaturvedi had not spent the mandatory 3 year cooling off period between two deputations. His posting at AIIMS is his first deputation. During the cooling-off period an officer is required to serve only in his state cadre.
Pushing the ACC to take a final decision, the tribunal in its third order on the matter, in April 2016 had said, “Government of Uttarakhand has said that it is up to the government of India to decide waiving off the cooling off requirement of the applicant between one deputation and another and that if government of India grants permission for inter-cadre deputation to Delhi for the applicant, they have no objection to that.”
The letter from Uttrakhand for Chaturvedi that the CAT quoted in its judgment read, “Waiving off the cool-off period is outside the domain of the Uttarakhand government and only Union government is competent to do so. If the Union government approves this the state government shall not have any objections.”
On the cooling off period, the CAT had also noted that the Union government, under the NDA regime, in May 2014 had passed specific orders that allowed waiver of the cooling-off period if the officer was to be posted as a personal secretary or officer on special duty – the post Kejriwal had wanted Chaturvedi to join in. The CAT took this notification on record in its judgement to order, “We would like to say it is solely in the domain of the ACC to grant special dispensation, as has been done in quite a few cases in the past or take a decision otherwise.” The ACC order did not refer to the central government’s May 2014 order.
But, the ACC in its order, rejecting Chaturvedi’s plea, also said its secretariat had advised that Chaturvedi should serve in Uttarakhand to “familiarise himself with the demands and constraints of the cadre in the formative stage of his career.” This, the secretariat said, was needed as Chaturvedi had only recently been moved from Haryana to Uttarakhand in the face of extreme hardship and had not served in the state as yet.
