The arrest of former principal secretary health Pradeep Shukla in connection with the National Rural Health Mission scam has suddenly activated the complacent IAS lobby in Uttar Pradesh.
Hours after the senior IAS officer’s arrest on Thursday, a group of about a dozen IAS officers held an informal dinner meeting to express their resentment at the arrest.
The officers have decided to call for an emergency meeting of the almost defunct Uttar Pradesh IAS Association and discuss threadbare the issues related to Shukla’s arrest.
“Our patience has snapped and it is time the government realised that the bureaucrats cannot be made scapegoats for every wrong that they do. Pradeep Shukla simply complied with the orders of his political bosses — not that he had any choice in the matter — and today he is behind the bar while his bosses are roaming free. The bureaucrat must enjoy a certain degree of immunity, especially when he is working in a government that follows the authoritarian style of functioning,” said a colleague of Pradeep Shukla.
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Behura walks out of Tihar jail after bail
New Delhi, May 11: Two days after getting bail from the Supreme Court in the 2G case, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura was Friday released from the Tihar Jail, where he was lodged for over 15 months.
Behura, arrested on February 2 last year along with former communications minister A. Raja, stepped out of the jail in evening after their lawyers furnished the bail bond before special CBI judge O.P. Saini on Friday.
“Behura has been released from the Tihar Jail. We had furnished the bail bond before the trial court today after which the release warrants were issued,” Behura’s counsel Pramod Jalan said.
A bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and H.L. Dattu had granted bail to Behura on May 9 on a personal bond of `10 lakh and surety of `5 lakh respectively.
Behura had challenged the high court’s order of December 16, 2011, which had denied him the bail on the ground that he was the “perpetrator” of the alleged illegal design of Raja and cannot claim benefit of parity with others released on bail.
Behura is facing trial in the case along with other 13 accused, including Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi.
— PTI