IFS officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi (file pic)
President Pranab Mukherjee has quashed a departmental chargesheet against Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi, who blew the lid off a multi-crore plantation scam in Haryana in 2009.
Mr Chaturvedi, currently the Chief Vigilance Officer at Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences or AIIMS, exposed a scam in Haryana where funds from international agencies and the state government were allegedly embezzled in January 2009. The 2002-batch officer was then the Divisional Forest Officer in the state's Jhajjar area.
His report stated that the plantations existed only on paper and no work had been done on the ground. Based on the report, an intensive inquiry was done which resulted in the suspension and charge-sheeting of 40 people, including five forest range officers.
However, Mr Chaturvedi was soon moved out of Jhajjar in one of the 12 transfer orders he was given between 2005 and 2010. He was later charge-sheeted twice by the Congress government in Haryana. He was first accused for "poor survival" of trees planted during his tenure in Jhajjar. The chargesheet was quashed in 2011 by the then-President, Pratibha Patil.
After the whistleblower officer was given central deputation, the Haryana government last year charge-sheeted him for "return of grants" that was meant for plantations in Haryana. The President's office on Thursday said the charges against Mr Chaturvedi were not 'sustainable'.
The Congress government in Haryana, however, has played down the incident, claiming Mr Chaturvedi's transfer was an 'administrative' matter. "The Haryana government doesn't work with any bias. Our policy is reward and punishment," Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said yesterday.
The Hooda government has been accused of witch-hunt after an IAS officer, Ashok Khemka, was transferred, allegedly for ordering a probe into land deals involving businessman Robert Vadra, who is Congress president Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law.