Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who has been removed from the post of AIIMS Chief Vigilance Officer.
A section of AIIMS doctors today started a signature campaign in support of Sanjiv Chaturvedi who has been removed from the post of Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) of the premier institute.
"We have started a campaign and doctors who are against the recent removal of Chaturvedi have signed. This campaign will continue till tomorrow," said a senior doctor.
Faculty members of AIIMS under the Forum for Rights and Equality and the AIIMS Front for Social Consciousness on Friday defended Mr Chaturvedi and said that the senior bureaucrat's removal was not justified.
"He is an honest officer. He had been doing his job diligently and exposed several cases of irregularities. His unceremonious removal will send wrong signal to all upright officers," said another doctor.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Thursday had said that Mr Chaturvedi was removed as he was "not eligible" to hold the post.
"He was not at all eligible for the post that he was holding at AIIMS. We were informed that without the approval of the Central Vigilance Commission, nobody can be assigned the post of CVO anywhere.
"This was brought to our notice. We took cognizance of the same and removed him from the post. This is routine," Dr Vardhan said over the sudden removal of Mr Chaturvedi.
Mr Chaturvedi was removed from his post without the Health Ministry citing any reason for his removal last week. The charge of his office has been assigned to Joint Secretary and CVO of Union Health Ministry, Vishwas Mehta.
The tenure of Mr Chaturvedi, a Haryana cadre forest service officer of 2002 batch, was fixed for four years and was supposed to have lasted till June 2016.
During his two years tenure at AIIMS, Mr Chaturvedi had unearthed many corruption cases and malpractices in which CBI registered cases against senior officials of the institute.
Besides, departmental penalties were imposed in a number of cases.