Didn’t quit because of MHA notice on ‘misconduct’, asserts IAS Kannan Gopinathan

IAS officer Kannan Gopinathan who had resigned from service last month apparently in protest against the Kashmir clamp down, has said that the reports of his quitting in the face of a show cause notice by the Union Home Ministry (MHA) were false, and underlined that he was given the additional charge of MD of two smart cities after he had replied to the notice.

News agency IANS had reported citing “sources” that the officer was to be sacked for his alleged dereliction of duties and was served a notice on July 8. He resigned from job on August 21.

In a response on Twitter, Kannan shared the clarifications that he had earlier mailed to the authorities.

He also slammed the news agency for not taking his response before publishing the said report and equated the agency with OpIndia, a right leaning website.

“@ians india Hi.. since @ians india has decided to do an OpIndia by not seeking my response on an article on my resignation, I have no other option than to reply here with what I replied to OpIndia I guess. But one would have expected better from a news service. Sorry!” Gopinathan tweeted.

On the allegation that there was a delay of nine months on his part in submitting a file to amend the policy regarding discontinuation of issue of Permanent Residence Certificate, he said that a written direction was never given to put up the file within a specific timeline and all communications with respect to the said file were verbal. The delay was due to him being preoccupied with election duties.

“I was directed by the Administrator in November 2018 to prepare a timeline of various notifications with respect to issuance of PR certificates. The timeline was submitted in December and after a brief discussion, the Administrator asked me to put up the file, which I immediately passed on to the subordinates,” Gopinathan said in his reply, which he shared on social media.

“However, owing to my involvement on war footing for the impending visit of the Prime Minister to Silvassa and thereafter my responsibility as District Election Officer and Returning Officer for the General Election 2019, preoccupied a majority of my time. I was reminded of the file by the advisor to the Administrator in the third week of March.

“On this occasion, I had submitted that since reduction of years required for permanent residency is a policy decision, as the model code of conduct is in force, it might be appropriate to put up the file after the elections. Later, as per direction, the file was put up on May 17, the Administrator gave approval on May 23 and notification to the effect was made on May 31,” he said.

On the allegation that he was asked to get the work of underground cabling and shifting of electric poles completed by May 2018 to enable early execution of the projects of beautification of roads from Naroli to Saheed Chowk and from there to Samarwani, which was not done till March 2019, he shared a work schedule of the proposed shifting and said that the scheduled completion as per the awarded work order was July 2019.

On the allegation that he had bypassed the prescribed reporting channel for appointment of director on board of DNH Power Distribution Company, by sending files directly to the administrator instead of routing through the advisor, he cited past precedents from recent years of similar submissions.

It was also alleged that he had failed to prepare the nominations for the Prime Minister’s award under various categories for innovations in public administration, Kannan refuted those claims too.

“In fact, five applications were made under various categories for the said award. Out of which, the district was shortlisted in two categories - PMAY(Urban) and PMAY (rural). Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we did not win that award,” he said.