by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
“You don’t give grape juice to a Sugar patient” Modi told IAS officer Raghav Chandra
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, Feb 16
The Modi government has sent shivers down the spine of the bureaucracy. If three senior IAS & IPS officers have been sacked unceremoniously for “non-performance”, National Highway Authority of India chairman Raghav Chandra removed in a mid-night order recently.
The sudden removal of Raghav Chandra took even the Road Transport & Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari by complete surprise.
Highly placed sources in the Prime Minister’s Office say that Chandra was responsible for his own sacking. It so happened that the PM called for a review meeting of projects of the NHAI. The PM holds such review meeting one-on-one basis with the heads without the presence of Ministers concerned to review projects.
When the PM asked Raghav Chandra about the progress with regard to the Rs 10,166 crores 14-lane
Delhi-Meerut Expressway project, Chandra reportedly explained difficulties in completing the project in time. It was in December 2015 when Modi had laid the foundation stone of the project not only easing Delhi’s traffic congestion but also to woo the BJP’s crucial vote bank in the Jat heartland and trading community. The total land required for three packages is 348.6 hectares of which 343.36 hectare had already been acquired when Modi laid the foundation stone.
What sealed Chandra’s fate was that he went a step further and started explaining to the PM how the NHAI is completing other important projects in UP.
The PM, sources say was losing his patience and told Chndra curtly, ““If you give grape juice to a sugar patient, can he survive ? The sugar patient requires Bitter Gourd (karela) juice.” And the meeting ended abruptly. It was 12.30 midnight when the meeting ended and Raghav Chandra’s transfer orders were on the website of the government website next morning.
For Gadkari, it was another shocker as he had seen three chairmen at the NHAI during his three years’ stint. Raghav Chandra was shunted out to an insignificant post as secretary, national commission for Scheduled Tribes. Yudhvir Singh Malik, who was cooling his heels as special secretary in the Niti Aayog, was sent to NHAI. Malik shot into prominence when he banned Nestle’s products as chairman of the FSSAI. The ban was removed by courts and Malik was shunted out to NITI Aayog a year ago. Interestingly, Gadkari had no clue either of Chandra being shunted out or Malik being brought in.
Umang Narula, an lAS officer belonging to the Jammu and Kashmir cadre and CMD of India Tourism Development Corporation was sent back to his parent cadre. It is learnt he was slow in divesting ITDC hotels.
