Chandigarh, April 13 (Inditop.co) Choosing the Baisakhi festival day to create a stir in Punjab’s administrative and political circles, senior official Jasbir Singh Bir Tuesday submitted his resignation, questioning the governance style of the ministry led by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.
Bir, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who apresent is secretary of the general administration department (GAD) and has held important posts in the past, sought premature retirement from service in his resignation letter addressed to Punjab Chief Secretary S.C. Aggarwal.
While the chief secretary’s office confirmed having received the resignation letter, Aggarwal added that he was yet to read its contents. The government has not yet taken any decision on the resignation letter.
Bir refused to say anything on his resignation ecept that the state government be contacted in this regard. He has served a three-month notice to the state government to end his services.
“I could never have imagined that during the last remaining years of my service career and during the tenure of the present government, a time would come when I would feel helpless and think of saying goodbye to government service. In the last two to three months, I have undergone a severe mental trauma and not only you but also the respected chief minister is aware of it,” Bir wrote in his resignation letter, sources revealed.
“I was hoping that the necessary measures would be initiated to reduce my mental trauma. I had high hopes that the government, in view of the duties performed by me in public interest which later became the cause of my humiliation, would take some corrective measures so that the malpractices in the administrative system are wiped out,” Bir wrote.
“There is a need to bring improvement in the ethical norms of the present administrative system so that no citizen, who wants to avail a government service, becomes helpless and a victim of bureaucratic extortion due to corruption in the system.”
The letter mentions about some incident that led to the “humiliation” of the senior IAS officer but the details of the incident have not been given.
Sources in the state government say Bir was divisional commissioner of Patiala and additionally held the charge of Faridkot division also. He was shunted out from the post December last year to a junior posting as director, cultural affairs after an indirect run-in with Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. His resignation is the fallout of that incident.
The sources revealed that Bir had got the orders of the Punjab and Haryana High Court implemented by getting an illegal bus stand operating near a residential and commercial area of Mohali town, adjoining Chandigarh, removed. Some of the buses operating from the illegal bus stand were from the Orbit Transport Company owned by the family of the chief minister.
The high court had ordered the administration to remove the illegal bus stand from the spot after residents complained to the court. But when it was done, the affected transporters complained to Sukhbir Badal and Bir was immediately and unceremoniously removed from his post.
In his resignation letter, while Bir commended Badal and the chief secretary, the name of Sukhbir Badal was conspicuously missing.
In the last few months, after being elevated as deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Badal, who is also the Akali Dal president, calls all shots in the government headed by his 83-year-old father.
The Akali Dal has been running an alliance government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state since March 2007
