Tag: ias officer kashmir

MHA Sends IAS Officer Who Quit Over Kashmir Issue a ‘Chargesheet’

The accusations in the chargesheet are the same as those in a memo calling for an inquiry into Kannan Gopinathan two months after his resignation.

New Delhi: Kannan Gopinathan, the IAS officer from Kerala who resigned from service in August over the restrictions in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the Centre’s August 5 decision, has tweeted about a chargesheet filed against him by the Union home ministry.

Gopinathan tweeted that he first received a call from Daman administration, asking for his address so the missive can be sent to him. He said it was eventually emailed to him and tweeted that he ‘acknowledged receipt’.

Calling the mail a failure of the ‘targeted harassment’ the dispensation is capable of, Gopinathan also, notably, took the opportunity to harness the police and lawyers’ tussle at the Tis Hazari court in New Delhi and said he did not wish to bother Shah at a time as “weak” as this.

Gopinathan tweeted that the charges in the ‘chargesheet’ correspond to those in the memorandum issued for a departmental inquiry roughly two months after he submitted his resignation to the services.

As can be seen in the photograph he tweeted below, the charges amount to ‘dilatory tactics’ and ‘insubordination’ while he was collector of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Three of the causes delineated for initiation of the inquiry have to do with submissions (or not) of files.


In customary style, the former IAS officer has been mocking in his criticism of the home ministry and Union home minister Amit Shah over the matter. The memorandum warns him of utilising political influence to further his cause or interests – a fact which Gopinathan made an example of to ask Shah to restore peace in Kashmir.

The charges against him also include the creation of an adverse image of the government services through his talks with the media. Among other news organisations, Gopinathan has spoken to The Wire too in the wake of his resignation.

“This is not Yemen, this is not the 1970s, that you can deny basic rights to an entire people and nobody will say anything about it,” Gopinathan had told The Wire then.

Also read: ‘This is Not the 1970s’: IAS Officer Quits in Anguish Over Kashmir ‘Emergency’

“It is your actions that creates such an image. Not my interactions,” he tweeted in response to the charges. Gopinathan has also tweeted his detailed responses to the charges levelled against him.

Late in September, Gopinathan was barred from visiting the Jaykar Knowledge Resource Centre (JKRC) – the library at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). While university students had wanted him to visit the library, Gopinathan was stopped over “procedural” requirements.