New Delhi: One of the 20 officers transferred on January 21 by the former interim director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, M. Nageswara Rao, has alleged that his transfer was an outcome of personal vendetta.
In a petition filed before the principal bench of Central Administrative Tribunal, T. Rajah Balaji has charged that he had complained against Rao’s “rude and insulting conduct” back in March 2017, and that probably led to his transfer.
Balaji also complained that while he was transferred to Delhi from Bangalore in October 2018 on medical grounds (his mother-in-law was suffering from cancer and needed to be treated at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences), the interim director did not take this into account while issuing transfer orders.
Incidentally, Rao was recently pulled up by the Supreme Court for giving his opinion in favour of transferring another officer, A.K. Sharma, who was investigating the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape cases, out of the CBI last month.
Sharma too was shifted out as part of the mass transfers that took place in the agency in the aftermath of the open feud between former chief Alok Verma and his deputy, Rakesh Asthana. Rao, deemed close to Asthana, ultimately apologised before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi on February 11.
Posted to Delhi for mother-in-law’s cancer treatment
In his complaint, Balaji stated that in June 2018, while posted as a superintendent of police in the CBI in Bangalore, he had requested the then director to post him anywhere in Delhi. He sought the transfer so that he and his wife could take proper care of his mother-in-law, who was suffering from cancer.
He said the request was “favourably and sympathetically considered”, and he was transferred from Bangalore to Delhi. In Delhi, he was posted in the Anti-Corruption Branch of CBI. He joined on October 10.
Also read: We Are Witnessing the Death of the CBI. Will Indian Democracy Follow?
Balaji said since his mother-in-law needed to be rushed to AIIMs at short notice, on November 30 he asked Union minister for urban development and housing affairs if he could be allotted a house near the institute. The very next month, the minister, Hardeep Puri, allotted him a flat in East Kidwai Nagar, which is just across the road from AIIMS.
However, on January 21, 2019, Rao transferred Balaji to the CBI Academy, Ghaziabad. His was one of the 20 “midnight transfers” that were ordered.
`No justification for transfer’
Balaji submitted that there was “no valid reason or justification” for his transfer and that it was also not in “public interest” or because of “administrative exigencies”. He charged that the transfer was “an abuse of powers with malafide intention to cause inconvenience and harm to the applicant”.
The officer also questioned the timing of the order, as it came just three days before the high-powered committee chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to decide the name of the next CBI director. Balaji said “as a matter of propriety”, Rao, who was heading the organisation as director-in-charge only, “should not have gone at a spree of mass transfers of various officers from the level of Joint Director to Additional Superintendent of Police…”
Balaji, who was selected as DSP in the CBI through the UPSC in May 1997, submitted that he had an “unblemished service record” with “no complaint against him of any nature, whatsoever”.
Balaji had complained to CBI director about Rao’s conduct
Balaji said before CAT that in March 2017, he complained about Rao’s ‘misbehaviour’ and ‘misconduct’, and had followed this up with another detailed complaint two months later.
The matter pertained to an incident in March 2017, Balaji said. The office of P.K. De, the Central government panel lawyer in the Supreme Court, telephonically requested the services of inspector, SCB, CBI Chennai, S. Jeyaseelan, the following day to assist him in a case as the latter was conversant in Tamil.
Since Inspector Jeyaseelan was not eligible for air travel, Balaji said a proposal was moved for the ex-post facto sanction of the director, CBI through Rao, who was then serving as Joint Director and Head of Zone, Chennai.
Also read: How a Senior IPS Officer Could Have Been CBI’s First Woman Director
Balaji submitted that since the telephone line was bad and due to the pressing work of the court in hand, he “inadvertently missed” sending a message regarding the air travel request to Rao.
Rao, he complained, later spoke to him rudely while demanding an explanation on why he was not informed about the inspector’s air travel. In a subsequent meeting on March 11, Balaji said Rao again raised a query about the issue.
This time Balaji first demanded an apology from Rao for his alleged rude and insulting conduct over the phone. At this, he said, Rao asked him to leave the meeting and when he said he was there to assist the Deputy Legal Adviser, he made the latter ask him to leave the meeting.
Balaji said a memo was also served on him on April 17, 2017 in which he was accused of “gross misconduct” and for sending an inspector beyond his jurisdiction without authorisation, and that too by air which the officer was not entitled to.
The memo also stated that since Balaji, in his conversation with Rao over phone on March 8 on some other issue, did not inform the latter about the so-called urgent case matter, it meant that “either there was no such urgency warranting allowing a non-entitled officer to travel by air without prior approval of his tour programme or he has intentionally kept his immediate supervising officer, in dark…”
Balaji wrote in his plea that “it is a known fact that I had complained about your misconduct to the then Director, CBI vide letter dated March 11, 2017 and subsequently, when you had served me with a memo, your misconduct was set out in more explicit terms by me vide letter dated May 2, 2017, and, now you have abused your official position to service your personal sleepless (sic) malice and prejudice against me…”
He charged that it was due to this that Rao was “displeased with the applicant and ordered (his) midnight transfer.”
Balaji said he also submitted a representation to Rao on January 20 seeking a review of the transfer order. However, he said while the transfer order of another officer, Y. Hari Kumar, was cancelled upon a similar request, his representation against his transfer to CBI Academy, Ghaziabad remained unconsidered.