Delhi Fire Chief Atul Garg transferred – three months before his retirement
Garg held the post for six years since December 2019. He will now serve as Director, Fire Safety Management Academy.
The order was issued by Delhi government's Home Department on July 14, which stated, 'Lt. Governor, Delhi, is pleased to order that Atul Garg, Director, Delhi Fire Services, is transferred and posted as Director (Fire Safety Management Academy), Delhi Fire Services, with immediate effect…'
As per the order, Garg will report to the Principal Director (Delhi Fire Services) — a new post created in June by the Delhi government — but will no longer be part of the DFS.
IAS officer A Nedunchezhiyan of the 2012 batch (AGMUT cadre) — recently transferred from Puducherry to Delhi — has been appointed as the Principal Director.
There has been no official order regarding Garg's successor, according to sources. Garg did not respond when contacted for comment.
Delhi Home Minister Ashish Sood did not respond to messages or phone calls when contacted for a comment on the reason behind Garg's transfer.
Sources said the Principal Director's post was created to appoint an IAS cadre-level officer as the head of the fire department. Until now, the posts of Director and Chief Fire Officers had been held by officers from the technical cadre.
Currently, there are five Chief Fire Officers and five Deputy Chief Fire Officers who report to the Director. These officers will now report to Nedunchezhiyan, they said.
The post of Director was created after the implementation of the new Delhi Fire Service Rules in 2010. Prior to this, the DFS was headed by an officer of the Chief Fire Officer rank.
SK Dheri was the longest serving Chief Fire Officer — he held the post for 17 years in the 1990s.
Before Garg, G C Mishra, A K Sharma, and R C Sharma retired from the post of DFS Director. They were from the technical cadre, an official said. Garg had joined the unit in 2002 and was also awarded the Meritorious Services medal in 2009.
Sources said that while Garg's tenure remained largely uneventful, he came into the limelight earlier this year during the alleged cash recovery incident at the residence of a Delhi High Court judge after a fire.
Currently, DFS has a staff strength of 3,312 against the sanctioned strength of 3,623.
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The Print
3 hours ago
- The Print
‘Said I treated her like bachchi, bitched about her'—behind Sitharaman's ire at ex-finance secy Subhash Garg
This resulted in a 'broken functional relationship' between the two, and Garg's eventual resignation as finance secretary, he has written in this richly detailed account of the rough and tumble of administrative life, including the many run-ins he had with politicians throughout his career. The reason for her angst? She thought that Garg went about 'bitching' about her and treating her like a bachchi (child). New Delhi: Soon after she assumed the charge of the finance ministry, Nirmala Sitharaman's attitude towards the finance secretary, Subhash Chandra Garg, was frosty, the IAS officer of 1983 batch Rajasthan cadre has written in his new book, 'No, Minister: Navigating Power, Politics and Bureaucracy with a Steely Resolve'. In the book, he also describes former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje as an 'official split personality,' who felt 'cheated' when he was called by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in 2014, soon after Modi became PM. Also Read: Home Secy Govind Mohan joins IAS/IPS/IRS officers who have benefited from Modi govt's extension culture A strange accusation—'bitching' about the finance minister On their official visit to Japan in June 2019, Garg complimented Sitharaman for speaking effectively at the G-20 finance ministers' meeting. Her reaction surprised him. 'I hope I did not disappoint you,' she retorted. 'My suspicion that she was carrying biases against me were confirmed but I chose to ignore it,' Garg writes. The second instance came soon after. In June, 2019, Garg sought to conclude a pre-budget meeting with stakeholders by thanking them for their participation, and telling them their inputs will be put up in front of the minister for her consideration. 'I will abide by what the finance secretary says, especially a finance secretary who is much older than me in the finance ministry, and not discuss the suggestions,' Garg recalls her as saying. She did not close the meeting thereafter, and the stakeholders continued to make their interventions. Even as they were talking, Sitharaman turned to Garg, and said, 'What do you think, I cannot violate you? I would.' When Garg went to her room to clear the air after the meeting, she was 'livid' and 'relentless', he writes. 'She said I treated her like a bachchi (child). At one stage, she said that I had gone to various people and 'bitched' about her, which was false. She also threatened to bring the entire matter to the notice of the prime minister.' 'I don't know what had got into her. It was clear, though, that there was a serious problem and that our functional relationship had broken down,' Garg says. In the run-up to the Budget, things became worse. While the finance minister and secretary are supposed to work in tandem on the budget speech, which is closely vetted by the prime minister, the finance minister refused to share the draft of the speech with Garg before the meeting with the PM, he said. 'This created an unprecedented situation. I was responsible for finalising the speech and seeing it through to print without any glitches. Further, I was also primarily responsible for presenting and defending the speech in the PMO,' he writes. 'Still, I did not have a draft of it which my finance minister had finalised.' The 'last straw' for Garg was, however, the non-banking financial company (NBFC) package, which the PMO wanted to announce. The secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS), Rajiv Kumar, who recently retired as the chief election commissioner, proposed amendments in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, including conferring regulatory and resolution jurisdiction to RBI. Garg opposed this. While Sitharaman sided with Garg on this issue, he ended up irking Nripendra Misra, former principal secretary to the PM. The PMO decided to go ahead with the initial proposal made by Kumar. Garg signed the file with a fresh note saying that the proposal of the DFS is to be accepted. Sitharaman—who he says, 'found it difficult to clear any file on which differing views were recorded' —wanted Garg's earlier oppositions to be removed. 'She would not sign the file with the earlier notes still in it. Her office conveyed this clearly to Rajiv. Rajiv told me the note sheets recorded earlier would have to be taken out, destroyed and replaced with new note sheets with the same dates and numbers,' he writes. 'Though I had never allowed such a thing in my life, I acquiesced only to ensure that the budget process could go through.' 'But I decided that I would not be party to something like this ever again. It was the moment I made up my mind to quit the IAS,' he writes. 'Official split personality' This was not the first time Garg had irked a politician. In 2014, Garg was called by P.K. Mishra, then Additional Principal Secretary to the newly appointed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and was asked to join as India's Executive Director at the World Bank. His acceptance irrevocably antagonised his then chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, with whom he had worked for several years. Raje had an 'official split personality'—extraordinarily efficient and transparent on one hand, but 'different' on matters concerning revenue-earning departments like excise, land allotment, etc., he says. Yet, he enjoyed a close working relationship with her for years. When Raje learnt of his appointment, 'all hell broke loose' in Rajasthan, he writes. 'She was infuriated and felt cheated,' he writes. 'She summoned Rajiv Mehrishi (then the chief secretary of Rajasthan) and declared, 'Subhash is not going anywhere.'' She asked Mehrishi to write to the PMO that Garg will not be relieved, but the chief secretary advised her against it, given that 'the relationship between the two was also not very cordial'. Later, Garg was unceremoniously excluded from a cabinet meeting for which he went, and his relieving orders were suddenly handed to him. He was asked to immediately proceed on central deputation without even a courtesy visit to Raje, which he requested twice. 'I made one more request to see her before I departed Jaipur lock, stock and barrel on 24 September,' he writes. 'Her secretary did not revert. I decided that was the end of the matter. I never reached out to her thereafter. We have neither met nor spoken to each other since September 2014.' The recalcitrant minister Unlike Sitharaman and Raje, Garg did not work directly with the 'recalcitrant minister' Jayanthi Natrajan, who was the environment minister in the 'policy paralysis' era of the UPA II. In 2013, when Garg was appointed in the cabinet secretariat, first as a joint secretary and then an additional secretary, there was an 'evident rot' in the environment ministry, he writes. Not only was it procedurally difficult to get clearances, Natarajan 'sat on files for months', he writes. 'The environment secretary's helplessness was apparent—there were over 400 files reportedly pending, waiting for the minister's approval and signature,' he says. Even the constitution of the cabinet committee on investments did not succeed in getting the 'recalcitrant minister' to act. He relates one particular incident, 'a bizarre spectacle', where Natrajan kept former prime minister Manmohan Singh waiting for 40 minutes at a meeting of the cabinet committee on investments. When she finally showed up, she just said she would take more time to examine the projects without any explanation for the delay, Garg writes. 'The meeting ended with the prime minister advising the minister to try to clear the projects at the earliest,' he says. 'No one needed better evidence to conclude how weak and ineffectual Manmohan Singh had become in his own cabinet.' In the over-400-page book, Garg also writes of the difficult relationship he shared with Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and former principal secretary to the PM, Misra. Naidu, who like present times was a key coalition partner of the NDA government in the early 2000s, sought to direct disproportionate amount of central funds to Andhra Pradesh, Garg writes. When as director in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Garg sought to check this, Babu started 'baying for his blood', he says. As for Misra, on one occasion, Garg says he told him, 'Don't ever go to the PM over my head.' On another, he explicitly said, 'The prime minister is unhappy with you. The finance minister is unhappy with you. Subhash, you are not in tune with the thinking of the government.' (Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri) Also read: IAS seeing progress on gender parity—1 of 5 secretaries at Centre are women
The Print
11 hours ago
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Chandrababu Naidu is dreaming new dreams at 75. What other CMs are missing
That was in 2000. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) provided crucial support to the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government then. Garg was the director of the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) in the finance ministry. He writes that the hoarding of resources 'was clearly unfair and lopsided.' The World Bank assistance, specifically cheaper credits from the International Development Agency (IDA), was meant for low-income and poorer states. 'Using the efficiency of his administration and his political clout, Chandrababu Naidu was able to manoeuvre the system in Delhi, including the DEA, to divert a disproportionate part of the Government of India budget and external assistance to Andhra Pradesh,' writes Garg. Chandrababu Naidu bays for my blood'—This is a subhead in Subhash Chandra Garg's new book No, Minister . 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Nobody would be surprised to read ex-IAS officer Garg's account of how Chandrababu Naidu used his clout in the Vajpayee government to wrangle anything and everything from the Centre for his state. Garg's counterparts in other departments would have similar stories to tell. Let me cite just one more example here. Of the 4 million tonnes of rice the Centre sanctioned for the Food for Work programme between September 2001 and April 2002, Andhra alone got 2.15 million tonnes, 53 per cent of the total. And then it got one million tonnes more. Cut to 2025. Naidu hasn't changed. Only that it's now the Narendra Modi-led government that is going out of its way to please the Andhra CM. The Centre has already committed Rs 15,000 crore for Phase I of the Amaravati capital project. The state has secured Rs 12,157 crore from the Centre to support the first phase of the Polavaram irrigation project. In May, PM Narendra Modi laid the foundation for central projects worth Rs 5,000 crore, including a missile testing centre, Unity mall, Rail overbridge and six national highway projects in Andhra. And these are early days yet. Modi 3.0 still has four years left, and Naidu will continue to be vital for its survival. Also read: Chandrababu Naidu is important in both Centre and state. He is his own double-engine now Political opportunism or Andhra First? The former finance secretary of India has only revived an old debate. Chandrababu Naidu's political rivals and critics have a long list of his political 'betrayals'— marrying NT Rama Rao's daughter and then leaving the Congress to join the TDP; ousting NTR to become the CM; leaving the United Front to support the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998; Lok Sabha Speaker GMC Balayogi from the TDP allowing then Odisha CM Giridhar Gomang (who was yet to resign as MP) to vote against the confidence motion, which ended up bringing the Vajpayee government down in 1999; joining the NDA in 1999 Lok Sabha election to reap the electoral dividends of the Kargil War; demanding Narendra Modi resign as Gujarat CM post-2002 riots to joining hands with him ahead of the 2014 election; leaving the NDA for the Congress five years later only to re-embrace Modi before 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. It's certainly a long list. Naidu's critics would call them examples of political opportunism. His admirers would cite them as examples of his brilliant political acumen and his ability to play bigger national parties to his advantage. And, ex-IAS officer Subhash Garg as a neutral observer is only the latest to certify that Andhra Pradesh has made the biggest gains from Naidu's political somersaults. I call it his Andhra First politics. Take a look at this report by India Today in May 2002: 'Over the past five years, Naidu has managed to get the Central ministries to pour over Rs 40,000 crore into Andhra Pradesh. While the Central loans have doubled in five years from Rs 1,575.6 to Rs 3,189.9 crore, grants have jumped from Rs 1,528 crore to Rs 3,424.1 crore and external assistance has trebled from Rs 1,118 to Rs 3,640 crore. That the state has cornered a lion's share of resources is proved by just one statistic: while Central grants to all states increased by only 2.6 per cent between 2000-1 and 2001-2, Andhra Pradesh's share rose by 34 per cent.' The report quoted Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury as saying that Naidu's success in extracting resources was due to 'a weak Centre vulnerable to political blackmail'. When you talk to Congress MPs today, as the Modi-led government showers Naidu's Andhra with generosity, they echo similar sentiments. But ask the people in Andhra Pradesh. They would repeat the Onida TV slogan: 'Neighbour's envy, owner's pride.' Also read: Nobody should doubt Chandrababu Naidu's determination. If anything, they should fear it What other CMs need to learn from CBN Chandrababu Naidu, 75, is the third-oldest CM in India today—after Kerala's Pinarayi Vijayan, 80 and Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, 76. CBN, as he's known in the state, could afford to rest on his laurels. Creating something like Cyberabad and Genome Valley in Hyderabad would have been a lifetime achievement for any CM. Instead, he is setting new challenges for himself. 'Same things (liked Cyberabad) can't be created but improved versions (can be brought),' Naidu told me in an interview last month. It's not just the creation of the new capital city of Amaravati. CBN has now set out to build India's first quantum computing valley. He has launched a space policy to leverage Sriharikota's strategic location in Andhra Pradesh. It aims to attract investment worth Rs 25,000 crore in space-linked industries. He is very optimistic about his Zero Poverty-P4 (Public-Private-People Partnership) programme. I could tell this by the child-like excitement in his voice when he was telling me about P4. At a time when most Opposition leaders seem to be convinced that poverty can be eliminated only when the rich are made poor, Naidu's P4 is an interesting idea. You don't have to be an Adani or Ambani to participate in it. If you have surplus money to spare, help a family, mentor them. You can do it at the community level, too. What differentiates CBN from other CMs is ideas—original, imaginative and innovative. Look at his counterparts in other states. Most of them are doing the same things, often aping each other. At 75, Naidu stands apart. 'Imagination has no age,' wrote senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary Ram Madhav, quoting Walt Disney, in a column in The Indian Express. He was building a case for PM Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to ignore the unwritten 75-year age ceiling for holding office. Age doesn't matter unless you are a cheese, wrote Madhav. It's true. As I mentioned, Naidu's much younger counterparts in other states already look jaded and spent in terms of originality or ideas or imagination in policymaking. Is Modi 3.0 any different? That's food for thought for another column. DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal. (Edited by Theres Sudeep)
India Today
3 days ago
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No proof, report leaked: Details of Justice Varma's plea against burnt cash case
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