DoPT asks Rajasthan government to probe income certificate of IAS officer
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has asked the Rajasthan government to probe the authenticity of Income and Asset (I&A) certificate submitted by an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer which he used to avail the Economically Weaker Sections' (EWS) quota while appearing for the Civil Services Examination in 2021.
The officer, a domicile of Rajasthan, was selected for the IAS in the year 2022 and was allotted the Madhya Pradesh cadre.
Following a complaint by Vijay Kumbhar, a Pune-based social activist who is also associated with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the DoPT on May 5 asked the Rajasthan government to 'verify the authenticity of I&A certificate' issued to the officer 'under EWS category' and sought its comments. A copy of the letter is marked to the Madhya Pradesh government. A response from the DoPT is awaited.
DoPT is the cadre controlling authority of IAS officers.
According to Mr. Kumbhar, who was the first to complain against IAS probationer Puja Khedkar who was sacked in 2024 for allegedly submitting fake Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBD) certificates and Other Backward Classes (OBC) certificates to clear the 2022 civil services exam, there are at least 15 serving officers in various services who are facing the probe for misusing the reservation through fraudulent documents.
He said he wrote to the President of India in August 2024 highlighting the irregularities in certificates submitted by 22 candidates under various reserved categories such as EWS, PwBD, Other Backward Classes-Non-Creamy Layer (OBC-NCL), Scheduled Caste (SC), and Scheduled Tribe (ST) between 2015 and 2023.
'Initially when I wrote to the President, I did not get a response. However, when I started filing Right to Information (RTI) applications, the DoPT initiated the probe against documents submitted by 15 officers which include 11 IAS, two Indian Police Service (IPS), one Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and one Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officers,' Mr. Kumbhar said.
'The current probe, spanning Civil Services Examination candidates over nearly a decade, highlights a pattern of misuse that can no longer be dismissed as isolated or exceptional,' Mr. Kumbhar said.
On July 26 last year, the DoPT initiated an enquiry against six civil servants including probationers to re-examine their disability parameters. The enquiry followed after several posts on social media questioned the sanctity of PwBD quota as social media profiles of the officers showed them dancing, playing sports and other outdoor activities, in contravention to the physical condition described by them in official records. The IAS and IRS officers cleared the exams in 2010, 2014, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
Former IAS officer Sanjeev Gupta said that the cadre allocation of officers must show the EWS and PwBD categories against their names like it is done in the case of SC and ST officers.
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